I bought the book and then the assembled board, complete. Considering the time involved in building the device I felt it worth the price. If you use the completed board as described in the book no other programmer is required. It has a boot loader installed. Unfortunately, it takes an ICD2 to load the boot loader the first time. The vendor that supplies the board also has preprogrammed chips at a reasonable price. I found a few problems in the code that I reported via email and Dr. Peatman was kind enough to reply in person. He also expressed surprise that an old retired tech would use his course for recreation! The problems were mostly differences in the HiTech & MicroChip compilers. I uncovered a nasty condition when I inadvertently wrote to a string constant while using the MicroChip C compiler. It is an illegal operation but the result was to corrupt the boot loader, requiring another chip! Writing the boot loader requires a register setting that is out of reach with a PicStart Plus. The programming style presented in the book is focused on process control. It is a process loop that restarts itself every X milliseconds. It will reset out of a hang condition. This complicates the matter of timing operations the carry across interrupts. This and other conditions relevant to process control are handled in detail. Also, many simple hardware devices are interfaced and programmed to provide compete details of how to use them. I felt that it was a good value. I have not looked, but I would think the book would be available from text book resellers by now. There is a downside that the boot loader has exclusive use of the serial port. John Ferrell http://DixieNC.US ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Nall" To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public." Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 4:55 PM Subject: [PIC] Comments on the Peatman book > My wife gave me a copy of the John Peatman book, "Embedded Design with > the PIC18F452 Microcontroller" for Xmas. She said that originally > thought about just giving me an ice-pick (get it?) but decided the book > was a better idea. :-) > > I read through it, and thought that a few comments might be helpful if > someone on the piclist has been thinking about buying it. It is pretty > expensive, (around $60, I believe, on Amazon.com), and I don't think > that I would have bought it on my own. It does come with a (free) > circuit-board, which can be used to build a nice little test board. The > parts have to be ordered (Digikey sells a parts kit for the board for > around $56), and the board has to be constructed. But it has an array > of instruments that the book uses to explain the different applications > that the 18F452 can be used for (LCD, temperature sensor, UART port with > MAX 232, a revolving-pulse-generator, several pushbuttons, etc). I > built the board and it works fine, except that Olin's EasyProg > programmer won't program it. So I have to use the ICD2 for that. > Bummer, since I prefer to use the EasyProg. :-( Peatman does talk > about some other programmers, but I get the distinct impression that he > prefers the ICD2. So if a student has to buy the book, the ICD2, and > the parts kit, he or she is going spend quite a few bucks. (In all > fairness, there is provision made for using a cheap programmer, using a > bootloader that he has developed and which can be downloaded). > > The guy has a lot of stuff on his website (www.picbook.com) which can be > downloaded, including the source for all the programs that he goes > through. Which is nice, because it saves having to type them in. > However, he uses absolute code, rather than relocatable, which I don't > think is good. On the other hand, though, the explanations for what > the code is doing are well done, and of course making it relocatable is > not a big deal. > > That is my impression so far. I'm going to go through all his lessons > next, so may have a different opinion by the time I finish. If anyone > else has any impressions to share, I'd really like to hear them. Either > on-list or off-list, as you prefer. > > John > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist