I would like to mention the growth of PICmicro in India due to the availability of low cost development tools. PROGRAMMERS During 1995/96, MCHIP had only 17 devices and the programmer to support them was PICstart 16B costing around USD 200/-. No hobbyist could afford it and PICmicro was not popular in India. Later on as more and more devices were introduced PICstart 16C came into picture. Somewhere in 1998 PICstart+ was introduced to support many devices and for easy future updates and 16B/C series were discontinued. At that time too the PS+ was costing around USD 200+. Still there were not many takers for PICmicro among the hobbyist market. I built a parallel port programmer and tested it on 16F84 (called it PICburner and published an article in the local electronics magazine ELECTRONICS FOR YOU) with the s/w WINPICPROG from Nigel Goodwin. It worked at the first try many came forward to start using PICmicro. MCHIP introduced many more devices including 16F877 and a 32 bit version of WINPICPROG supported some of them. During this time, I introduced PICmicro into our state engineering collages and supported them with a low cost programmer (called it PICburner2). During the project period, many students came forward to build their projects based on 16F877 since a low cost programmer was available. The popularity of PICmicro grew among students, hobbyist and industries in India. Due to limited device support on WINPICPROG, I designed a serial port (JDM type) programmer (called it PICburner3) and ICPROG from Bonny was the control s/w. The numbers of PICmicro users (students, hobbyist and industries) grew tremendously. Now my PICburner3 design has been copied by many sources and they are selling it like hotcakes in the local market. Now I have introduced a very low cost ICSP programmer supported by ICPROG and WINPIC800 and allow the hobbyist to convert into a ZIF socketed programmer themselves. The marker is still growing for PICmicro. Today the ratio of PS+ to others must be 1:100. If PS+ was the only programmer for PICmicro, then PICmicro would not have become so popular today. Many thanks to all the authors for providing many designs and s/w interfaces. BOOTLOADERS To use BOOTLOADERS, still a programmer is required initially. BOOTLOADER is one step behind ICD's. They are fast to program in circuit and limited level of debugging can be carried out using the same serial port from where the code was downloaded. ICD ICD1 had a limited device support but it was cheaper compared to emulators. These too were duplicated by some and by the time the market for ICD1 could pickup, ICD2 was introduced. Again the landed cost of ICD2 in India is around USD200/- unaffordable by students/hobbyists. The ICD2 clone currently being supplied is being lapped up due to its low cost compared to MCHIP ICD2. MCHIP ICD2 uses 16F877 with RS232 and USB interface. This USB interface is a parallel interface to the PSP of 16F877 and hence it is fast. The clones use USB to RS232 converter chip on board or off board and hence it is slow compared to MCHIP ICD2. If USB to RS232 is used, then the baud can be set to 57600 and if only the RS232 is used directly, then the baud can be set only to 19200. There is definitely a speed limitation in the clones unless they use USB to parallel interface chips. PICmicro In 1997, I designed a UPS chip based on 16C71. Many showed interest in a single chip UPS. Today 99% of the 300 VA to 500 VA UPS being sold in India run on 16 C/F 72. Since the 16F877 is in the engineering collage syllabus, all the students use 16F877 for their projects. The volumes of 16 C/F 72 and 16F877 being sold is very high in India. With the introduction of FLASH devices by MCHIP, the chip sales too have grown since there are no wastage during development and easy firmware upgrade. If affordable compilers/programmers/debuggers and offcourse reprogrammable devices are made available, then the usage and sales of the devices will automatically grow. Cheers Ravi Pailoor Member - Microchip consultant Program e-CHIP INFOTEK (P) LTD. Bangalore - India. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist