> As a newbee, I am wondering which chip I should start with??? The pic page
> says to start with the 16F, some chatter on here indicates another chip has
> more capabilities and sells for less.

I started with the 16F84.  From what I can tell it's a pretty standard one
to start with.  It's flash programmable, so it is very well suited to
"burn and crash" development/learning.  It has enough IO ports to play
with, built in EEPROM memory for permanent storage, and is cheap
enough.  It doesn't have some of the more advanced features such as A/D
converter, PWM, comparators or built in serial communications.  It also
has a manageable number of pins.

For starters I think it's a good choice.  The other features (PWM, A/D
converter etc) can be tricky to get working (for me at least) and would
probably just muddy up the learning process...

Good luck.

-Steve

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