Mel I appreciate your responce - very mellow for you ;-)
I can understand the constant feelings towards people who ask the same questions over and over. A little searching of the site would help, and reading through the manual. I am guilty of not searching enough, and to me sometimes the manual is vauge. It needs a more indepth explanation of some of the functions and better examples of the uses. The manual is guilty of the same thing I did in my original post, assumes you know how to set up the start of a program. It hardly ever sets up a full program when providing an example of how to use a particular statment. Sometimes you just gotta do that for some people. They see it correctly written form the first DEFINE to the last GOTO and it clicks for them.
Regarding the RTFM. Yeah, it pi**ed me off. I'm not usually that emotional, but I had received the news yesterday that my mother had been diagnosed with skin cancer, and I'm 4000 miles away and can't visit. I apologise for my responce. Still I think as a mature group, we don't need the phrase.
My intent was to basically have a reference point thread for LCD out of the box compatability with PBP's LCDOUT commands. I'd read the manual several times, and the datasheets for the 2 pics I used, and the datasheet for the LCD. Played with 2 LCD's, 6 different PICS (3x 16F818, 3x 18F1320) and still had not got it to work, and checked the wiring and defines about eleventy billion times.
To help cure the problem of repeated questions and "do all my code for me" questions, several things can be done.
1. When new members sign up, they should have to go through a FAQ section before they get to post anything.
2. Stickys should be placed at the top of the forums stating "Questions that will not be answered without/until" and an appropriate list created such as post all your code, what doesnt work, what hardware, what programmer, what software? etc etc.
3. Better examples of code that include a complete program from start to finish. Basically a library of building blocks that a member can adapt to their individual needs. Examples to state the PIC used, and possibly a schematic? I realise that some people do this already and provide a wondeful level of information.
4. It seems as though a lot of the same questions are posted in different forums. Perhaps if they were moved to the correct forums, people would be able to find something they are looking for quicker and easier. Repeat posts in different forums by the same member should either be combined into one thread or the second instance be deleted. If this website grows and includes 60,000 members one day, double posting will cluter this place and kill its usefulness.
5. Reciprocation. If you are a beginner, you'll be doing all the asking. One day you will grasp something, use it, understand it and be able to do some of the answering. Don't leave the answering up to the same handful of people. If you KNOW it works and how to fix the problem for someone, help out and post up a responce.
6. In keeping with a community feeling, there should be someway (I'm aware of the adverts forum) that people can advertise any services that they provide. If someone needs a pcb designed, and another member does pcb layout, there should be a way for the 2 to connect. Perhaps under the user name, there could be a "services offered" line? Yeah its free advertising through the site, and the site itself dosent gain primary benefits from it but its users do, and the word spreads. Great if you are a small business and that one customer helps make this months mortgage payment.
I will post up the defines and even a picture of the breadboard in another relpy to this thread later today.
Regards,
James.
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