-- WH Tan <whsiung.my@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2006/6/7, Phil Keller wrote:
> 
> > The Explorer 16 board is OK.  There are two major,
> at least what I would
> > consider major, issues.
> 
> > 1- The PICTail plus interface.  If you would like
> to add your own
> > circuit to the design you will need to make your
> own PICTail board.
> > Microchip has no plans to sell a prototype board
> with the PICTail
> > interface.  They do provide the Gerbers but for
> each of us to make our
> > own prototype board with the PICTail interface
> seems like a major
> > duplication of effort and should have been
> provided by Microchip.  There
> > is a small proto area but no access to any signals
> without soldering
> > directly to the pads designed for a surface mount
> header.
> 
> Agree on this.  It seems to me that there's no
> PICTail+ daughter board
> from Microchip at the moment.  Making my own
> connection header with
> 2.54mm pitch is difficult too, as the prototype area
> seems to be too
> small.
> 
OUCH! Not sure now I wasted my hopes........

> 
> > 2-The PIC24 has dismal erase/write cycle lifetime.
>  Typically 1000 but
> > could be as low as 100 cycles.  Yes, you can
> purchase additional PIM
> > modules for the next 100 erase/write cycles but
> for a development
> > environment (well actually this is a PIC24 problem
> not an Explorer 16
> > problem) this approaches unacceptable.
> 
> I think Microchip may consider a differrent grade
> chip, just for
> development purpose.  Something like the windowed
> device for the OTP
> part, they can take the move to provide a
> development grade device
> with 100,000 write/erase cycles.
> 
I hope so.

John

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