On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 02:49:06PM -0400, Stephen Webb wrote:
> > 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...

Much of this discussion is outlined on my "Why the 16F84 is obsolete page.":

http://www.finitesite.com/d3jsys/16F628.html

However I'd like to disagree with the last point. The other features are
invaluable once you progress from the blinky LED stage to real projects. PWM,
serial, A/D, and especially multiple timers each have applications in real
projects. Also once you figure out how to use them, generally you find that
each is set a few configuration registers, and then the module goes off and
functions independantly from your code, using either flags or interrupts to
indicate conditions. In short it vastly simplifies the process for real
projects.

Finally there's no need to muddy the process. You can treat any of the new
parts, and I just received a sample shipment of 18F452, 18F1320, 12F675,
16F630, and 16F877A parts, like a base 16F84 for starters.

Warning, car anology coming up: it's like each has a 1st gear that takes
awhile to learn. But once you're up to speed, with the 16F84 to go to 2nd, 3rd,
or other gears, you have to manufacture them on the fly before you can use
them (i.e. bit banged serial, software PWM and A/D, multipexing timers, etc.)
while on the others the gears are there and you just have to figure out how to
use them. But they all have 1st gear, and you can start learning there.

So I advise start working with a part with all the tools and grow into it.
The road gets a lot tougher when you start with a part that is deficient of
the tools that are used to do real work.

Just my $0.02.

BAJ

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