----- Original Message ----- From: "Jan-Erik Soderholm" Subject: RE: [PIC:] Why programmers use PICs as controllers? > If you use the serial port as it was ment to be used, > I don't see that it's "pain". It's more or less the same > OS-API's as always, isn't it ? If you use the serial port as it was meant to be used, there are APIs that have been available since at least Windows 3.x, and some of the newer APIs are actually a lot more convenient, if harder to get your head around. But people writing PIC programming software are often people who use PICs, and thus are a lot more confortable getting close to the iron than some VB programmer used to writing invoicing programs. For these people, the APIs they like are no longer available. Further, programming a PIC without onboard intelligence requires that you do some things that the serial port never intended. These things were pretty easy on 3.x, got harder on 9x, and got to be a major pain in NT (Windows 2000 and XP are actually NT 5.0 and 5.1). > That's why I said that a "intelligent" programmer is easier > to use on modern Windows versions, since you don't have > to deal with special drivers to access the hardware port. Yes, absolutely. When I wrote about issues for the user, I was really thinking in terms of USB programmers. For modern PCs these seem to be the straightest line, but Windows handling of installing USB drivers still isn't what we would like it to be. > Neither do I, and I don't think the questions (or my reply) > was specificaly about the "user" anyway... Yeah, and I don't know that the user (gets weird when the user is a developer, doesn't it) really sees any difference. I suppose for "programmer friendly" operating systems like Linux, where a lot of what is going on under the covers is obvious to the end user, that a nice, normal serial connection, or even a USB connection, might be somewhat easier than apps where you need to do weird things to the port, but I'm guessing that it's not all that different. I have a fair bit of experience with Linux, but I've never installed a PIC programmer of any flavor on Linux. But on reflection, I don't know of a "simple" PIC programmer where the installation on XP SP2 is all that "simple". Quite a bit of software that I have tried I have neot been able to make work at all. FPP, which is really wonderful on 9x, and not bad on XP/SP1, is a major pain to install on SP2. Even on SP1 it requires the user to install some drivers that aren't really much fun. FPP only programs a handful of PICs but it is very fast and easy to use. Winpic (the one from the German guy -- I think there are at least two Winpic's) is basically a straightforward install, but it can only be used on XP by an administrative user. As people get more security conscious, this gets to be a problem. Both of these can adapt to a wide variety of programming hardware. I haven't messed with anything proprietary except ICD2. --McD -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist