Which book to pick?

[bartman]

I want to buy a book that I could learn the basics of assembly language. I don't want to write big programs in assembler, but I would like to be able to have some understanding of what a small bit of code would do and if would be nice if I could eventually write some very simple stuff.

It would almost have to be an "Assembly for Dummies" book referencing PICS, but I do have a VERY basic grasp of PicBasic for what that's worth.

These are some I have had suggested:

1. Myke Predko : Programming & Customizing the PICmicro
2. Square 1 : Easy Microcontrol'n

I also read on another thread here about

3. PIC in Practice by David W Smith

Anyone else have an opinion they would care to share?

Thanks.

Bart

[Luciano]

Hi,

No need for books!

Complete Mid-Range Reference Manual (Last Updated: 10/15/04)
(See section 29).
http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/e...Doc/33023a.pdf

Pic Tutorial
http://www.mstracey.btinternet.co.uk...al/picmain.htm

PIC16F84 Fundamentals
http://www.boondog.com/%5Ctutorials%...Cpic16f84.html

Introducing the Microchip PIC
http://tutor.al-williams.com/pic-intro.html

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Can you read French?

Le site de Bigonoff:
http://www.abcelectronique.com/bigonoff/

Best regards,

Luciano

[mister_e]

French in canada is mostely speak in the East Region => Quebec and if you're lucky, in Ontario.

For those who understand and read french, i can recommend the Bigonoff tutorial. Really well explain, still simple. No luck Bart, there's no translation on that one

Thanks for the other links Luciano! Still handy to have more and more

[bartman]

I prefer books. There is no high speed internet in the area I live so doing anything online is a painful process plus the phone line is tied up for too long.

So, no one has any book preferences?

Bart

[mugwamp]

I've used the Easy Microcontrol'n book. It's well written but doesn't go very far. You should plan on having to buy most of the Square 1 books to get to the same level as Chuck Hellebuyck's "Programming PIC Microcontroller's with PicBasic".

[mytekcontrols]

For whatever it is worth, I would recommend learning the Microchip RISC assembly language, and not the Parallax or Picbasic supported 8051 style syntax. The reason I say this, is that when you move into the 18F series devices, you will be hard pressed to find support for this alternative PIC asssembly language. Personally I first learned PIC assembly by using Parallax's 8051 style assembler, because I could not stand the more cryptic (my opinion) Microchip RISC instruction set. In fact I can't for the life of me figure out why Microchip never made a deal with Parallax to incorporate their syntax into its assemblers. And the reason I say this, is because why would anyone want to write 8 lines of code (RISC) instead of what can be done in 4 lines (8051)? But no use crying over spilled milk, this is just the way it is. And many times it is simply better to adapt, then to be orphaned in a dying unsupported language set. This is what I have done (although painfully), and now write my assembly code in RISC, because I have need of the much better 18F series architecture.

Of course you may tell yourself that you don't care about using any of the 16 bit processors, and that the older series is just fine for your needs. But if your job is about doing embedded system design for others (or you ever anticipate doing such), you would be much better off having the flexibility to jump into this family of processors, and having a much shorter programming curve if you can take along your pre-existing code modules that you have written and know to be reliable.

Of course better still, is to have familiarity with both the RISC and 8051 type assemblers. But I would still suggest starting out with RISC, and then if you feel so inclined move into the 8051 style syntax. This way you can still write streamlined 8051 code (fewer lines) where you can (non-18F series), and then RISC code when it is necessary, so as not to be limited to only certain PICs.

At any rate, have fun with whichever approach you decide to take .