KPL writes:

> Otherwise, gpasm and gpsim are alive, and you should be able to find
> most recent versions at their websites or sourceforge.

	Excellent. I would sure like to still use the stock of
older PIC's and the PICStartPlus if I can because they are not
exactly land fill material.

> I would recommend getting pickit2, as it works in linux for sure, with
> pk2cmd tool.

	That sounds promising, also.

> It's actually extremely difficult to imagine somebody completely blind
> playing with electronics, so I think I'm not the only one here wishing
> you success. And a good year! :)

	You have to do some things completely differently,
obviously. While you could conceivably put schematics in Braille
and raised lines, it is not practical because it soon becomes
very hard to follow a complex schematic. That, in fact, was why
I got interested in PIC's in the first place. You can do a lot
with one or two PIC's that would have taken a whole board,
printed or wire-wrapped. That way the circuit complexity is in
your program which can be documented and managed much more
easily.

	What I do for various IC's is write down the pin-out in
Braille after either reading from a text file or having somebody
read the pin description if necessary. Most DIP packages have a
notch cut between Pin 1 and whatever is the highest pin on the
other side. You can usually feel that notch although some chips
have a tiny pin prick-like dot and one really has to look for
it. I can usually feel those with a tooth pick or the end of a
piece of wire.

	I know some are wondering about getting shocked, etc. I
don't like getting shocked or possibly electrocuted any more
than anybody else so it is a case of using common sense such as
keeping the really hot stuff covered and using an isolation
transformer when you can while working on anything that tends to
be dangerous such as the primary sides of switching power
supplies since most of that circuitry is not isolated from the
line.

	I have a couple of talking multimeters for making
measurements and a device that you don't see much called a
signal tracer. Mine is early sixties vintage but I have seen
solid-state versions of this instrument. It is basically a VTVM
with a loud speaker instead of a meter movement. Some have both
and the knight-kit signal tracer I have has a tuning eye,
sometimes called a "magic eye" tube. This is a vacuum tube with
a green circle at the top. With no signal, the circle is open
and then it closes when signals are present.

	Anyway, signal tracers can let you follow an audio
signal and they have an RF probe that let you detect signals
well in to the VHF range. You can sometimes test it by touching
the RF probe and if you hear AM radio stations, the system is
working.

	Finally, a portable AM/FM/SW radio is handy to use as an
RF field detector. It is really good on anything with
microcontrollers in it because you can listen to the RF hash and
sometimes get an idea as to whether anything at all is happening
or the device is hung up in never never land. You obviously
can't tell what the processor is actually doing, but if you have
an interrupt routine that is supposed to run 100 times per
second and you hear a buzz that could be in that range, you know
it is at least getting that far. Whether it is doing the right
thing when it does requires better testing techniques.

	Well, this has gone pretty far afield so I will end it
here for now.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK=20
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group
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