> >         I doubt very much the dollar or two savings has ANY
> > bearing in the case of
> > the original poster. OTOH these parts are newer and therefore
> > have less
> > support, both in the realm of programmers and in the realm of user
> > experience. I don't think it is yet necessary to abandon the
> > 16F876 or 877.
>
> I am not sure about what exactly the OP wanted, but it never hurts to
> know the possible alternatives. BTW there are more reasons than price
> alone to look at non-87x pics, for instance physical size, or running on
> an internal oscillator.
>
> And IMHO tools that have not yet caught up with at least the 12F's are
> rather slow in doing so, which means that they probably should not be
> used in a professional environment ;)

        I understand that, however the original poster is doing this for a school
project IIRC, priorities are vastly different in that realm then in
commercial development (while the internal oscillator is a nice feature I
don't see it as important enough to warrant diving into a newer part).
Personally I would NEVER recommend such new parts to a person just getting
into it, parts that new will surely have "quirks" that haven't yet been
fully discovered by the PIC community. The 87x have been out long enough,
that, IMHO, all the major quirks have been discovered, explained and worked
around.
        People must sometimes realize that when a person is NOT developing for a
commercial product priorities can be VASTLY different, this case is a
perfect example of that.

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