> 1. From what I can tell, to use c as the programming language, I
> have to be using a PIC18 or higher, and with PIC16 or lower, I must
> use assembly.  Yea or nay?

You will get as many answers here as there are folks on this reflector.=20
My biased opinion is that C is a great timesaver on PIC18s and sometimes
PIC16s, ONCE YOU ARE VERY FAMILIAR WITH THE PIC.  If you really want to
use C, then I would go with the PIC24 or dsPIC30 parts.  C on them is a
whale of a lot friendlier, and they aren't a lot more expensive if you are
only making a one off.

> I think
http://microcontrollershop.com/product_info.php?cPath=3D112_160_197&product=
s_id=3D583
is possibly exactly what I need

That is a PIC16 only board.  I think you will have a little less pain with
a 18F or better yet 24F, but I think your task is perfectly doable on a
16F.  There are a lot more 16F resources out there, but it is a sometimes
annoying part.  The 18F fixes a lot of the annoying bits.  The 16 bit
parts were really invented with C in mind.  They are a lot tougher in
assembler than the 8 bit parts, a lot simpler in C.

> I don't yet grasp the difficulty of driving a Hitachi HD44780

Not really very tough.  There is plenty of available code on the net,
including mine, but almost all of it will be impossible to understand.=20
Although it will take you a lot of time to sort it out yourself, I
recommend going through the pain.  I do have a lesson in my PIC Elmer
course on using this LCD.

> I'm interested in using piklab and gpasm/gplink under Linux

Pretty convenient, and for smaller PICs, integrates well with SDCC, which
is admittedly a somewhat lame compiler.  I'm a little more of a make guy,
but even though it isn't quite as glossy, I find piklab a little more
tolerant than MPLAB.

To be honest, though, when I have done C that needed an LCD I just ripped
off the LCD code from Elmer 160; I never actually grokked all the LCD code
in C.

And while I really like the 16 bit parts, they don't integrate as well
with PIClab (yet) as they do with MPLAB.  MPLAB does run well in a VM, and
even does decently under wine.

Sounds like you are planning some fun.

--McD


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