Olin Lathrop wrote:

> William Chops Westfield wrote:
>
>>  We want to know whether
>> the dsPic is powerful, cheap, easy to use, and common enough to
>> use as your general purpose "does everything" hobbyist chip.
>
>
> I think it's a good choice, particularly the 30F3013 and 30F4012.

I just got back into playing with PIC's about a month or so ago, after 
being out of it for several years.  When I quit, I was using the 
18F452.  When I started back, I decided (based upon the advice of this 
group) to go with the ds3013.  My reaction so far has been that for the 
"average" hobbyist (different people probably have different ideas on 
what "average" means) it might be a little bit too cutting-edge 
(bleeding edge?).   I like the 3013, and intend to stick with it, but if 
I had a definite project in mind to accomplish and saw the PIC as only a 
means to an end (rather than an end in itself) then I would use one of  
the 452's that are in the drawer.  The reason is strictly because there 
just are not that many tools available (yet) that support the ds3013, 
and if you run into difficulties then getting assistance is easier with 
one of the older chips.  I like the Wisp628 a lot better than I like the 
ICD2, for one thing.  There are good programming examples available for 
the older chips that don't exist (yet) for the 3013.

That said, however, I will say that so far I am really impressed with 
the architecture of the 3013 (and presumably the whole 30F family, but I 
haven't looked at the rest of them).  The instruction set is impressive 
-- lots of creativity went into the design.  I haven't gotten to the 
point of really looking closely at the DSP instructions, but the initial 
reaction was just that they wanted to make it easy to do some involved 
mathematical calculations.  Doesn't help me, doesn't hurt me.

>> and most of the existing code examples are written for a $$$ compiler
>> not accessible to hobbyists...
>
>
> So don't use the compiler.  The assembler, librarian, linker, debugger,
> simulator, and IDE are free and part of MPLAB just like with other PICs

I agree with Olin on that.   The only reason that I looked at C30 was 
because I could try it free for 60 days, and figured I should see what 
it had to offer.  You already know my reaction to that.  :-)  But the 
material that Microchip makes available at no cost is great, other than 
for the fact that it only runs under Windows.  If it ran under Linux 
also then it would be nice.

John
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