I realize this response is a tad late, but I've been real busy with the PIC
course.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan-Erik Soderholm XA (TN/PAC)"
Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2004 4:47 PM
Subject: Re: [PIC]: PIC tools in the educational sector.

> Nice idea, but why a PIC16F84 ?? It seems to be a quite
> recent design, judging from the dates on the page.

This is intended as an experimenter board for the Elmer 160 course.  A *LOT*
of the students are very green to anything microprocessor-ish (although they
are generally pretty astute with RF electronics).

We had quite a go around on what part to use.  No doubt some of the newer
parts are a lot nicer.  For the intended applications (control of radios),
the 18F parts are overkill, plus, compilers generally cost money and hams
are notoriously cheap.

But the real driver was the I/O.  The '84 has 13 I/O pins, 12 of which are
nothng more than straight I/O, and the remaining one behaves like the others
until you configure it to do something else.  All of the newer parts have
three or four uses per pin.  The prospect of explaining that right out of
the chute to folks who are very, very green with this stuff was not
appealing.  The widespread availability of ham related '84 projects also
played into it, but it was really the complexity of the newer parts that
drove the decision.

We all know that, once you've figure out how to use the things, using a new
form of I/O involves nothing more than looking it up in the datasheet.  Once
you "get it", the newer parts are no more complicated than the older ones.
I intend to make this point later in the lesson, and I have tested out the
PIC-EL with the 628 and found no issues.  But for someone just starting out
in the whole business, the newer parts with an alphabet soup around every
pin are very intimidating.

A little more detail is at http://www.amqrp.org/elmer160/lessons/e160aa.pdf

72/73 de WB8RCR    http://www.qsl.net/wb8rcr
didileydadidah     QRP-L #1446 Code Warriors #35

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