> Right, this is essentially what my (and any other) PIC divider does. > Simple, isn't it?
> And those 8-pin PICs are too cute to pass up. Yup. I saw the light when I was trying to work out a 1/2 second delay with something like a 555. I couldn't quite get what I wanted. Simple in software. Saves board space too. DigiKey sells the PICKit 2 for $35. I haven't used it. It's USB powered. Looks like it may have a small board for programming so you can program chips if you include a socket on your board. Another approach is to include a programming header on your board. The older version (PICKIt 1?) had an 8/14 pin socket and could program a few of the low cost chips. They were the PIC16F630/676 and PCI12F629/675. The 630/676 have 14 pins. The 629/675 have 8 pins. One of each pair had a 10 bit A/D. I don't think any of those chips has a serial port. You would have to do (heroic) bit-banging if you needed that. The other series of low cost small CPUs I've worked with is the AVR parts from Atmel. The ATSTK500 is $80 at Digikey. It programs most (all?) of the AVR parts. It uses a wall wart and serial cable. Both vendors offer free Windows software. With a bit of poking around you can find versions of GCC or assemblers that support the chips you are interested in. I'm not sure about programming from non-Windows systems. -- The suespammers.org mail server is located in California. So are all my other mailboxes. Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses. These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts