On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 7:38 AM, Philip Pemberton wrote: > So I guess what I'm asking is whether I should go for a PICKit 3 (or > even a PK2) or the full-blown ICD3, and whether it's worth getting the > Explorer demo board as well (it'd certainly make HPC debugging work go a > bit quicker -- I'm sick of making PCBs). > Forget about PICkit 3 now. The hardware is no issue. The firmware implementing approach is the issue. The software/firmware stability will easily render your PICKit 3 a brick. ICD 3 is quite good. I am using now it with a USB PIC24 and it is really fast and quite stable as far as I tested so far. I think it is worth the money. I have no experiences with the PIC18Explorer board, but I think it looks like the best PIC18 demo board so far. IMHO Microchip demo board tends to be relatively expensive (except the starter kits) compared to vendors like Olimex (which does not seem to have good PIC product compare to their ARM product) or ST. This is based on my total purchase cost of Explorer 16+PICTail-Plus USB/Ethernet and a few USB PIC24/PIC32 PIM. I think I've spend US$300+ just to experiment with USB PIC24/PIC32. More powerful demo boards from other vendors like ST (with Ethernet, USB, graphics LCD, CAN, etc) cost less. For example, STM32E-Eval costs US$208.75. http://parts.digikey.com/1/parts/1501774-board-evalution-stm32-512k-stm3210e-eval.html -- Xiaofan http://mcuee.blogspot.com -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist