Hello, Denny,

same to me, I'm happy with PBP up to now, but want to have more infos about
Proton+. I contacted crownhill by email to send me a link where I can
download the manual of Proton+, but never got an answer. Do you know, where
to download the manual?

Thanx in advance for help and best regards

Peter

PALMED GmbH
Zeppelinstr. 16
D-89160 Dornstadt
Germany

Tel.  +49 - 7348 - 92 82 18
Fax.  +49 - 7348 - 92 82 20
Email  palmed@t-online.de

----- Original Message -----
From: "Denny Esterline" <firmware@TDS.NET>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 5:14 PM
Subject: Re: [PIC:] Which is the best PICBASIC compiler and development
environment?


> > Hi All,
> >
> > I normally program in asm but are looking for a rapid development
> language.
> > It is important that I can write USB code for the 16c745, I know I will
> > still have to edit the HID description etc manually but are looking for
> some
> > way to speed things up a little.
> >
> > I have found at least two PICBASIC compilers on the net, Proton and MEL.
> Are
> > there others?
> > Is there a clear winner in feature or performance (such as code size
> etc)?
> > I would prefer to pay for a commercial product to get ongoing
> development.
> > Cost is not important (within reason!).
> >
> > I am trying to avoid C if I can, I already know how to write Basic or
> > Pascal.
> >
> > regards
> >
> >
> > Lee McLaren
>
> Well, I've used PBP from MEL for about a year now. And until last week I'd
> have recommended it without a thought. But a recent thread on the PBP list
> about "desired features" led me to take a good look at Proton+. As I
> understand it Proton+ has (and PBP doesn't) real function calls, 32 bit
> variables and floating point support.
>
> That's probably not enough to make me switch now, but I'll definitely keep
> an eye on it.
>
> The downside of PBP is they seem to be very slow at releasing new
features,
> and not many people are fond of their upgrade policy. (IIRC $25 for every
> upgrade, and you have to mail them your ORIGINAL disks, then they mail you
> an upgrade)
>
> The proton+ web site advertises free upgrades, but I've not actually dealt
> with them.
>
> PBP is by far the more common product, and you'll find much more in the
way
> of third party support and examples from other users.
>
> PBP is a command line only compiler. MEL makes an add on IDE, but
microCode
> Studio is a better tool. It's about $45, but it gives you bootloaders for
> all the capable chips and an in circuit debugger. (it's not hardware like
a
> microchip ICD or ICD 2, it's resident software and the same serial
> connection as the bootloader uses.) Not as effective as a hardware ICD,
but
> useful for setting breakpoints and watching variables and the like. Others
> might shy away from a bootloader, but for me at least, it accelerates the
> development cycle by several orders of magnitude. Right now I can hit the
> compile/download button and have code running on my chip in about 20
> seconds.
>
> As to the USB, I've not used it in the MEL product, and I've not seen any
> mention of it in conjunction with proton+, so I can't be much help there.
> But it does seem that the basic consensus is that the Microchip USB chips
> are sorely lacking when compared to other vendors products, I haven't seen
> many projects use them.
>
> Hope that helps some.
> -Denny
>
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