William Chops Westfield wrote: > A point of contention seems to be the degree to which things should be > simplified for the "beginning user." A rich set of peripherals is nice, > but is more to understand, especially if your goal is along the lines of > getting people used to bit twiddling. A CPU with fewer banking issues > is > nice too, unless you want to convey the idea that many microcontrollers > have annoying little "quirks" that users will have to learn to work > with. I guess I lost track of what this thread was about. There are two types of "beginner" PICs talked about here, and I think the recommendation for each is quite different. The first case is a hobbyist that has ideas for some projects that need a microcontroller. He may be roughly familiar with microcontrollers and wants to use the PIC line because of the wide availability, free tools, and best in class support. For that type of person I recommend to standardize on the biggest bestest in a 28 pin DIP package, which is currently the 30F3013 or 30F4012. These are worth learning in their own right, and will be relatively easy to get projects done. The extra $ or two compared to other parts is irrelevent for a hobbyist who will only buy a few. The second case is someone whos main point is to learn about microcontrollers and their applications. This may be a student or a hobbyist approaching it from the learning point of view. He's more interested in learning and tinkering than getting particular projects done. If you really want to *learn* about microcontrollers, then I think it's better to start with something low end and simple. Blink the LED on a 10F, then maybe a switching power supply with a 10F, then move up to a 16F with PWM. Look how the hardware takes care of that now, so now we add xxxx. This introduces the main event loop architecture. Now we add a command processor, which introduces pseudo threads. Then we do a PID controller using software floating point and move up to the 18F family to get more cycles. See how the banking and paging is different, and how the wider instruction word makes it easier, but note the higher cost. After a few more projects, move up to the dsPIC to get even more cycles. Now we've got true multi-tasking handling doing TCP while xxx and yyy are being processed concurrently. Now use the dsPIC in a real DSP application doing some filtering on an audio signal, then maybe do an FFT to make an audio spectrum analyser. The second is more of a college level course or track on embedded systems the way I would teach it. While someone going thru that will learn a great deal, I doubt too many hobbyist would sit still for it all. That's why I think the first case applies to most who ask here, and my answer is to start with a 30F3013 or 30F4012. ***************************************************************** Embed Inc, embedded system specialists in Littleton Massachusetts (978) 742-9014, http://www.embedinc.com -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist