Mechanique Bootloader

[PBCGuy]

Henrik

Did not get email alert about your response.

"Don't try to do it all at once."

It's more a case of looking into how 'user friendy' and 'wallet friendly' different Basic's are.

Using a PICKit3 makes them all wallet friendly.

Just not like the old days of Basic Stamp where you could click and download.

That definitely corrupts people for later work with PIC's.

Good point about Amicus w/Proton and Firewing w/Swordfish.

Putting a PIC on a breadboard is very wallet friendly.

Have you noticed nobody has replaced the Olimex 14 pin PIC boards etc. with USB versions?

Now on to 'How much are Proton and Swordfish like Basic Stamp Basic?'.

PICBasic is very much like PBasic and then it has plethora of more specific commands.

Very much like CCS compilers.

[tumbleweed]

If you want something that looks like a BASIC Stamp then PBP is what you want.

All the others are very different.

[PBCGuy]

Tumbleweed

Thanks.

Just getting to how the language is. Want to sort out hardware first.

I could not download Firewing compiler. The link was bad.

I can see Microcode bootloader is going to become a side project.

Best plan is to just 'take the .hex file and run'.

Load it into MPLAB IPE and program chip on board.

[tumbleweed]

You don't have to use the IPE software to program the chip.

MPLABX (and the older MPLAB) has command-line drivers for each of the programmers (PK3, ICD3, etc).
Using these you can add the Pickit3 as a programmer to the MicrocodeStudio IDE and then you can program the chips directly from there.

That way you don't need a bootloader at all.

[HenrikOlsson]

And I've written a post about how to setup the IPE command line tool in MicroCodeStudio, here it is. It then becomes a seamless one click compile and program that works with any and all PIC that compiler supports. It just tends to be a little slower than using a bootloader.

/Henrik.

[richard]

program that works with any and all PIC that compiler supports

except the newer ones like pic16f1615,pic16f1619 ,pbp3 supports them pk3 ipe does not.
I have not tried with mplabx version past 2.35 [the latest version that works with pbp3 afaik ]

[tumbleweed]

I know you can compile PBP in later versions of MPLABX... I just tried it using MPLABX V3.60 and it works.
Not so sure about using things like the debugger or simulator, but I haven't used PBP much in a long time.

You need to keep MPLABX updated to support newer chips. You can choose to install just the IPE and that should get you newer part support for programming. MPLABX allows you to install multiple versions so you can always keep v2.35 around too.
Installing the IPE should get you the command-line tools.

MPLABX/IPE is the only programming tool (from microchip) that will be updated, so we're sort of stuck with it you want to use the Pickit3.

[HenrikOlsson]

For the 16F1615 and 1619 you need MPASM 5.59 or higher.
I've got MPASMX v3.55 installed, it comes with v5.72 of the assembler and the assembler works fine with PBP3 as far as I can see. The Device Support document for IPE lists full support (program and debug) for the PICKit3 for both these devices.

Using MPLABX as the IDE for PBP might be a completely different story, I'm still hoping PBP3.1 will ship with proper support and documenation for that but I'm not feeling lucky.

/Henrik.