I've always been interested in how things worked and even at a young age of around 10 I was playing with lousdspeakers and wiring up extra speakers to my parents gramaphone !

I left school in '78 and went into an electronics apprenticeship - In 1981 I purchased my first computer, a Sinclair ZX81 (think it was sold under the Texas brand in the US) in kit form... I learnt BASIC (well Sinclairs version to start with) by spending hours typing in the code for games and applications printed in magazines, and then working out how to debug the problem when it wouldn't work due to a typo in the magazine !

I came back into electronics around 5 years ago when I wanted some flashing LEDs for a model helicopter, and ended up discovering the wonderful world of PICs. Put off by not being able to understand or follow Assembly, I opted for programming in BASIC and ended up with PBP as it follows and resembles the BASIC programming language I used with computers.

I still class myself as a novice in PIC programming, and I do agree with the comments about newbies, which is why I only post a plea for help after I've already tried to write my own code and have breadboarded the hardware.. I found that this has earnt me some respect from the seasoned users of PBP and have forged some good frendship from this forum by doing so. Having said that, often pointing a newbie to the datasheet is a waste of time as I still find them printed in a language I don't understand... it could be Klingon for all i care !!