As one newbie to another (assuming)(and not knowing your background, 
experience, schooling, etc. (the drawback to E-mail))  to the PIC world 
with a one off application for the 18F1320, it has been a bunch of 
grief. I have been able to get the USART to work OK at 9600 RS-232 with 
either 8mhz or 20 mhz.
 
The silicon bugs (if you can believe thats all of them) are listed, see 
the datasheet web page, right side, and probably for your application is 
a non-issue.

If planning Assembler and familiar with that, shouldn't be a problem. If 
somewhat familiar with "C" and planning to use that, I believe that's a 
deep hole. The actual "C" isn't such an issue, as the compiler quirks, 
in particular casting variables (memory models, rom, ram, near, far, 
etc.). The real problem the manuals have the needed info scattered all 
around:

C18 manual > Chapter 2, and Diagnostics
Getting Started > Chapter 4, FAQ's 4 and 15
Numerous places I have seen suggested to recompile the librarys as 
'near', but the details of how to do it are lacking, and help is scarce.

as just a few.

If new to the game should think of another direction. Check the software 
first to ensure it supports the chips and peripherals you plan on using. 
If cost is no object probably Micro Engineerings Pro Basic compiler 
might be a good choice. My application is 3 ADC sensors, send the data 
out a fiber optic link to RS-485 to a PLC when requested. Sounds simple, 
been a hassle. I looked back in the Aztec C-86 (Intel 8086 chip), and 
for even moderate programs, all straight forward "C", basically wrote 
per K & R and it ran.


At the moment wrestling with printf of a small unsigned char string 
array thats in idata with Far memory models, even though the 1320  
doesn't come near the near limits. You can take examples, cut an paste 
from the manuals or even straight files and they probably require 
tweaking to run.

:(


Genome wrote:
> I've heard of people having trouble with pic's that seem to have silicon 
> bugs in them.. can anybody post pic's that we should watch out for when 
> buying....
>
> I was going to buy a pic18f1320 and use it for some serialport communication 
> with a PC.. but doing some googling I accidentally come across in the 
> microchip forum that this pic has a USART bug... this may not be true but I 
> did not want to risk it and go for a differnt pic.. I did not want to waste 
> my time doing lots of work only to find out that a pic.. will not work as 
> published... 
>
>
>
>   
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