1. Is there a free assembly programmer for the PIC?

Microchip supplies MpLab, free download. Start at www.microchip.com


2. How can I be sure when I progam the 675, that I will be using only the EEProm, and not ruin the rest of the chip, to where I cannot program on it anymore? if so, what is the HEX address I must ORG to?

Hmmm, If I knew more about the Philips chips you mentioned this question might make more sense to me.

Best I can say is you're not understanding the nature of a PIC chip. Modern PICs such as (I asume) the 16F675 your working with have FLASH memory for program storage, EEPROM for constants and data and the like, and a small amount of RAM for the variables. All of this is good for thousands of write cycles, you can't "ruin" a PIC by programming it. And you can't put "program" code in the EEPROM. (well, technicaly you could, but there's no way for the PIC to run code stored in the EEPROM, so it'd be pointless anyway.)

There is a code protect bit that will prevent you reading the code you just programmed, but you can still do a "bulk erase" and program the chip again.


One other note, this forum is oriented towards using a BASIC compiler for programming. Assembly programming might be better supported at other sites. (www.piclist.com comes to mind)

But we'd be happy to have you get a compiler and join us, :-)

-Denny