I gave up on XC8 long ago but recently needed to quickly create some code
for a 12LF1840.
The original source was created long ago on an Arduino and I needed to port
it over.

Rather than work with MPLABx and the deliberately crippled XC8 Complier I
decided to give Great Cow Basic a try.
I was not expecting much, the documentation for GCB is disjointed and hard
to find and Basic is not very structured to start with.

Well I was pleasantly surprised.
Faced with confusing documentation and not much time I scanned a couple of
code examples  to get a feel for the language structure, then dove in and
used register and bit references direct from the data sheet, standard
assignments and the minimum of Basic as I remembered it.

To my surprise it took care of all of the config stuff, compiled first time
and generated amazingly compact code in Assembler.

The cherry on top, as a test I wondered what it would do with a PIC18F.

I changed one line, the device name, and it recompiled and ran on an
18f14k22 first time.

I have subsequently been playing with it and it even works as a fine
assembler, ignoring Basic totally.

Here is a short test program from the PICKit 3 starter guide:

[code]

 #chip        18f14k22
 #config      MCLR =3D ON
'__________________________________________________________________________=
_____

    ; -------------------LATC-----------------
    ; Bit#:  -7---6---5---4---3---2---1---0---
    ; LED:   ---------------|DS4|DS3|DS2|DS1|-
    ; -----------------------------------------

Start:
    clrf       TRISC           ; make all of PORTC an output
    movlw      b'00001000'     ; start the rotation by setting DS4 ON
    movwf      LATC            ; write contents of the working register to
the latch
MainLoop:
delayLoop:
    wait 500 ms                ' Replaces Microchip macros
Rotate:
    rrcf       LATC,f          ; rotate the LEDs (through carry) and turn
on the next LED to the right
    btfss      STATUS,C        ; did the bit rotate into the carry (i.e.
was DS1 just lit?)
    bra        MainLoop        ; nope, repeat this program forever
    bsf        LATC, 3         ; yes, it did and now start the sequence
over again by turning on DS4
    bcf        STATUS, C       ; clear the carry
    bra        MainLoop        ; repeat this program forever

    end                        ; end code section
[/code]

and in GCB form

[code]

 #chip        18f14k22
 #config      MCLR =3D ON
'__________________________________________________________________________=
_____

  ; -------------------LATC-----------------
  ; Bit#:  -7---6---5---4---3---2---1---0---
  ; LED:   ---------------|DS4|DS3|DS2|DS1|-
  ; -----------------------------------------

  TRISC  =3D 0                       ' all pins are outputs
  LATC   =3D 0b0001000               ' start with DS4 lit by setting bit 3
HIGH in LATC

  Do
      wait 500 ms                  ' delay 500ms
      Rotate LATC Right            ' shift to the right by 1
      if STATUS.C then LATC3 =3D 1   ' when the last LED is lit, restart th=
e
pattern
  Loop

End
[/code]

take a look, it beats XC8 and is free

Cheers
Chris


On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:57 PM, Isaac Marino Bavaresco <
isaacbavaresco@yahoo.com.br> wrote:

> Em 30/08/2015 00:29, Josh Koffman escreveu:
> > On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 11:01 AM, Isaac Marino Bavaresco
> > <isaacbavaresco@yahoo.com.br> wrote:
> >> I just found that my BAM() routine took more cycles than the time of t=
he
> >> LSB, so it messed things up.
> >>
> >> I was using 'memcpy', that took alone 390 tcy and a loop that took 182
> >> cycles.
> >> After some code changes, the routine works OK.
> >>
> >> There was another mistake that made the delay of the previous bit bein=
g
> >> used, instead of the current bit.
> >>
> >> Expecting a PIC16F work OK for this application may be wishing too muc=
h.
> > Hi Isaac,
> >
> > Thanks for sharing your code! I will need a bit more time to study it,
> > I think we code rather differently. That said, what do you consider
> > "A_DECENT_COMPILER"?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Josh
>
>
> Hi Josh,
>
> A decent compiler is a compiler that produces code that is hard for me
> to improve it much in assembly.
>
> Years ago, I used to program in assembly, like many do still today. As
> the compilers got better, I felt less need to program in asembly, to the
> point that to improve the code just a little took too long time.
>
> That is not the case of this XC8 crap. It is a longtime since I last
> designed something with an 8-bit PIC and got a surprise when I saw the
> results of this "experiment".
> I hope that for a PIC18 or an enhanced PIC16F the compiler can generate
> code that is close to the optimum.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Isaac
>
>
>
> --
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> View/change your membership options at
> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
>
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