While we're on this topic I thought I'd give some info
on the couple of books that I've been reading over the
last couple of months as I've been learning PIC programming,
though note that neither of these are likely suitable for
your needs... but might be useful for others...

I should point out that my background coming into learning
PIC programming is purely software related. I've been
programming software for years, but my electronics
experience is very limited, I knew the basics of what
various components do and the basics of Ohm's law, but
that's about it.

The first book that got me started was "PIC: Your Personal
Introductory Course" by John Morton. I found this book
easy to read and got me started in a gentle way. It didn't
require me to have a big understanding of electronics
and so I was usually able to understand the circuits that
were being constructed with ease. Where this book does
fall down though is that it's a little old and doesn't
cover the more recent chips. That's not to say that it isn't
useful, just that it doesn't cover all the newest peripherals
etc, and of course you need to have a good read of the
datasheet to get the programs working with later chips.
Also, some of the techniques that this book teaches are a
little dubious in places. For example, when saving the
state of the STATUS register on an interrupt, it just uses
movf instructions instead of swapf. Also in a number of
places the circuits show draw far too much current through
the PIC pins than should be done... and these are just the
things I've noticed as very much of a newbie.

The other book that I'm reading at the moment is "Designing
Embedded Hardware" by John Catsoulis. This isn't a PIC
programming book, though it does include chapters on PICs
and other processors (AVRs, Motorolla 68K). I've only read
the first few chapters, but it's certainly interesting so
far... it was a big help for someone like me to have a
chapter at the start explaining basic electronic concepts
and circuits, and now I'm moving onto chapters explaining
all about building circuits etc. It seems like a good book
for giving a grounding in creating embedded circuits and I'm
certainly looking forward to the later chapters where the
book gets onto communication mechanisms such as SPI, I2C
and even ethernet and USB.

Hope this might help someone.

Matt

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Matt N. Marsh
Email: matt@mattmarsh.net          Yahoo: marshmn
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                                     ICQ: 250467363
                                     AIM: MattMarshUK

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