Quote Originally Posted by cncmachineguy View Post
That is the "file format" same as pdf, doc,pbp,xls,dwg and so on.

But the content will not be correct. At best you will get an eight bit program to run on a 16 or 32 bit processor. This will not be too good. For instance, when we declare a WORD variable, the compiler generates code to make the uP act on the WORD in multiple BYTES. The 16 bit uP would not need the extra overhead of manuiplating the BYTES since it can handle WORDS. But the program would have it anyway since it was compiled for an eight bit uP.
PBP could very well have a separate compiler switch like it does for longs to switch up to 16 bit compiler, yeah it would probably be a a complete rewrite from the code in an 8 bit compiler but the interface could remain the same and use the same syntax. Look at how similar "C" compilers are for each series. All said I think it would be Do able, however; I think the upgrade price would be steep, I think it would HAVE to be. My thoughts are it would be worth it so as not to need retraining in " C ".