Tony Pan said:
> I simply dropped the
> newer version and returned to 7.87PL4.
>
> But now I have another issue with 7.87 because it doesn't work with
> 16F876A. But I don't have confidence in 8.00 and later. Thus I want to
> leave PICC.

Hi Tony,

I've used PICC for several years, and noticed that 7.83 made the most
efficient code. During that period of time, there were many bugfixes. Now
there are fewer and fewer bugfixes, and the generated code if less
efficient. Why? Because it has gotten very conservative.

I am of two minds about this, since I don't want bloated code but also
don't want the headache of tracking bugs in the compiler. I can also
imagine what HiTech is doing. They want to be done with the 14 bit version
except for adding new part numbers. One way they can do this is by making
an extremely conservative compiler, which is what you have with version 8.

I use version 8 every day and will continue to do so. It works just fine,
is the "industry standard", I'm familiar with it, and most importantly
it's already paid for. Yes, it's annoying to look at the generated code
and see it setting ram banks and pclath in the middle of a 50 word
program. If I was buying a compiler today and wanted the best of both
worlds, I'd buy Bytecraft. If you really want to dump PICC and spend more
money on a compiler for the tired 14 bit core, that'd be my
recommendation.

BTW, I think Bytecraft wrote the Microchip compiler for the 18 series,
someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Cheerful regards,

Bob

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