Olin Lathrop wrote:

> The price of a PIC for one-offs doesn't matter much anyway. The same 
> argument goes for why not pay a little extra for a 28 pin part versus 
> a 18 pin part. How often does that extra little space saving matter on 
> a hand built design anyway?

It occurs to me that the main thing I really use the 40 pin parts for 
are "Zero Offs".   That is, stick the part on the solderless breadboard, 
prove that I can in fact do what I need to do with a specific built in 
peripheral, then go figure out what PIC I really want to use for the 
design, then "fixate" the design using the real part.   The '877 was 
great in it's day simply because it had one of everything in the product 
line built into it...  If microchip made a 16F part with a specific 
building block, it was in the '877.   The "reduced pin count" versions 
of the '877 didn't have all of the ports which the '877 did, so the '877 
was the good "generic, don't worry about whether the block is there" part.

Besides being out of '877's, the main thing that brought me to the 
realization that the '877 may need a "Replacement" in my prototype parts 
collection is that it didn't have the built in 8Mhz osc that the '88 
does, which I *really* like because I really dislike dealing with XTALs 
for proto work, since keeping an XTAL running on a breadboard sometimes 
can be a unique and educational experience.  

-forrest


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