A good idea in order to have a direct PIC and a PC bilateral communication using the PIC's UART and HSERIN and HSEROUT without an external inverter like MAX232 is choose a PIC with Comparator Module like the 16F877A or 16F88 or 16F628.

You just need configure the comparator module as "Two Common Reference Comparators with Outputs" where the output of comparators are redirected to pins. Then the TX pin used to HSEROUT is hardwired to the input of comparator 1 . The inverted output (true) is now outputed in the C1.

To receive from PC serial is directed to input of C2 and output is hardwired to RX pin used by HSERIN.

Both comparators may use the internal reference (Comparator Voltage Refrence Module enabled and routed to C1, C2 ) or use an external.

I already have tested this trick with 16F88 with good results.

Of course this is not the true level converter like the MAX232 but works fine in my PC.

I hope this be useful for some users.

ACJacques