Well things are looking up! I've PBP up and running as well as my U2 programmer. Haven't made the EasyPIC3 programmer work though, USB driver issue I think, but the board is useful for running the PIC after prog in the U2. I tried working with the code mentioned above from over at rentron.com but I don't have a serial LCD so went looking again. I found this "PicBasic Experiments With The PIC16F877" over at rentron.com also which fit better with the EasyPIC3 board and it's LCD in 4-bit mode.
I'm using a 16F88 because it's what's on hand. So I edited the code to work with just a PORTA and PORTB and the LCD of the EasyPIC3 hardwired to PORTB 4-7 etc.
I had a few problems getting it working... funny story (well not so much)... The DS1820 has it's own home on the EasyPIC3 (EP3 for short) board, a 3-pin socket labeled DS1820 with a pull-up resistor (10k). I pulled the DS1820 out of the breadboard I stuck it into for safe keeping a couple days earlier and observing polarity plugged it into the EasyPIC3. Loaded up the code from PBP to the 16F88 and dropped it into the EP3, powered up and... LCD displays "Temp in degrees" then "0.0 degrees C". Troubleshooting commenced.
To make a long story shorter I double checked the part number of the DS1820 thinking there may be changes that were not backward compatible to the older code. What I found was a 2N2222 in the socket where the DS1820 should have been. A quick glance at the breadboard showed another TO-92 device with a dozen other resistors, capacitors, chips etc... the DS1820. Maybe not such a great place to store it.
Anyway, swapping in the right part didn't help. Still 0.0 degrees C. Back to the code. What I found was the setting of the ADCs to digital was required. Changing the ADCON1=7 to ANSEL = 0 got me 26.5 degrees C on the LCD. I found the ANSEL=0 in an older thread here http://www.picbasic.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=2996. Thanks Darrel.
I read a bit more about setting the ADCs but don't quite understand ADCON1 vs ANSEL are they chip specific? I'm looking for someone to point me to something I can read for a better understanding.
Neo