trying to decide on pbp

[Acetronics2]

Hi CNCMG

Having been Playing with R/C stuff for ... some years ... I can tell you PBP is a real Handy tool, and most of the time ... no assembler programming required.

The best advantage, I think, is a truly compact and reliable code ... with very short debugging time. ( if any time even necessary ...).


IF I had to find something weak ...

Let's say the lack of Whisle and Bells features like universal libraries for GLCD and so on, where 8 bits processors begin to show their limits ...

May be Real time processing stuff ... but it is a common weakness for PURE basic programming.

Most of time, a nicely structured program does it without pain.

PBP + assembler knowledge is the winning cocktail ...

Alain

[cncmachineguy]

If I need to be patiant and wait for the manual, feel free to tell me. Otherwise heres my next question.

How do you folks suggest I setup my work flow? By this I mean, I hace ICD3 (and ICD2) and am clearly used to working in mplab.

Am I now gonna want to work in a new IDE or add plugin to mplab or something else? I would normally just type my asm program in mplab, compile, program/debug, and done.

I know I can read the manual online here somewhere, but it doesn't feel like I saw a clear as mud answer last night while reading.

On a different note, will i always need to answer the random question or does it go away after some number of posts?

[mackrackit]

Being you are comfortable with MPLAB I would stay with it.
http://melabs.com/support/mplab.htm

The random question never goes away.... But there are only about six "randoms"

[rsocor01]

CNCGuy,

Also, you can watch the next video to get you started. The video also has some nice tips and tricks. Ignore the LABX-1 Experimenter Board part if you are not planning on using it.

http://video.melabs.com/getting_started/index.html

Robert

[tenaja]

cnc--
Before you decide on PBP, I would suggest you also try the Proton compiler demo, and get a feel for which you prefer. The bottom line is that both are great compilers, and you won't go wrong with either. They are both based on the BS2 language, although Crownhill hasn't tried as hard to adhere to it as they've expanded Proton. I have purchased and used both compilers, and now almost exclusively use Proton. I would say that PBP is a tiny bit better for newbies, for two reasons. The parser is a little more forgiving with extra parentheses, and it's also able to parse out longer calculations. (Also, it's a little closer to BS2 compatibility--and a lot of newbies try to paste code.)

I use Proton, however, because I prefer it. If you know and are comfortable with asm, then you may also. Proton allows you to use bytes, words (2 bytes) and dwords (4 bytes signed) and floats all in one file without selecting a separate compiler. It also has a few more commands, in addition to built in support for interrupts. And quite a few of the "undocumented" features of the compiler are available on the forum, allowing you to go wild. More importantly (for some projects), however, the code is always more compact with Proton, because it has an optimizer that takes a few additional passes, depending on your settings. Sure, PBP has a great user-base supplied interrupt routine, but the code is still always larger than with Proton, even with Proton's optimizer off. And the bigger the program (i.e. crossing page boundaries) the bigger the difference in code size.

Oh, yeah... Proton also puts out a readable ASM file, rather than a file filled with macros. That's probably the main reason the optimizer is superior on Proton--because it has one, and PBP leaves all macro code as-is, with no optimization. But that's also why PBP compiles in less time, since it doesn't make optimizing passes.

FWIW, Crownhill, the company who brought us Proton, also brought you this forum.
http://www.protonbasic.co.uk/forum.php

[mackrackit]

Does Proton still do the dongle thing in order to run the software?

[cncmachineguy]

Well I will keep proton in the back of my mind as i already ordered PBP.

I do have a new question, Are you saying I won't be able to use bytes and words in the same program? Of course, I am used to only being able to work with bytes. Words are just a concept to me that require lots of xtra code.

[tenaja]

Does Proton still do the dongle thing in order to run the software?

Yes, Proton still has a dongle...
But free upgrades.

LONG ( with the 18Fxxx chips)

LONGs (Dwords in Proton) are not available for 16F's or smaller chips. For a hobbyist, this is not an issue. On the other hand, if designing for a product where price is an issue, it can be a deal breaker.

[cncmachineguy]

CNCGuy,

Also, you can watch the next video to get you started. The video also has some nice tips and tricks. Ignore the LABX-1 Experimenter Board part if you are not planning on using it.

http://video.melabs.com/getting_started/index.html

Robert

Somehow I missed this post, and its in my thread!