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.

The PIC16F84 used to be the standard beginner's chip, and there are
lots of projects around.  However, it has become a bit obsolete and
comparitively expensive.

The PIC16F628 is one of the suggested replacements.  It's pin compatible,
has the same basic architecture with more on-chip peripherals, more memory,
and costs less.

The other major suggested replacement is one of the pic18f series like the
PIC18F1220.  These are comparable in price to the 16F84 (somewhat more
expensive than the 16f628), but have architectural improvements that are
likely to benefit a newcomer to PICs as well as the typical increased
functionality.  OTOH, PIC16F binaries won't "drop in" to an 18F part. (I'm
not sure this would always work going from 16f84 to 16f628, but it wouldn't
be as impossible...)  I'm not even sure that there is compatibility at the
source code level (at least at the "complete project" level), so there's
likely to be less 'ready to run' code on the net.  For a while, anyway.

BillW

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