dsPICs

[mister_e]

Yeah it does indeed... they also support PIC24, PIC32... if you're ready to pay the price and the annual fee too

Microchip C30 student work fine... Microchip have improve their C compilers lately.

MikroElektronika have some compiler for DsPIC too. Probably the only one Basic compiler 'till now... i said maybe....

[rmteo]

I use the mikroE BASIC compiler for the 16-bit (PIC24F/J, dsPIC30, dsPIC33) devices and it works great. Price is also very reasonable ($149) and as far as I know, it is the only BASIC available for the 16-bit PIC's. As mentioned by others, you can also use the C30 compiler from MicroChip which is free for the student edition.

Would not go back to using 8-bit PIC's except for low pin-count (<18 pins) and very low cost apps (<$1 per chip). The power, versatility and ease-of-use of these 16-bit PIC's are hard to beat.

[mister_e]

Yup, DsPIC are not as this hard... but for many... the multiple Datasheet to download would be enough to be afraid of

[rmteo]

Steve, I agree. It not so much the datasheet as the Family Reference Manual.

It is interesting that for the 8-bit devices (baseline, midrange and highend/advanced), the family reference is in one volume. However, for the 16-bits, you have to download individual chapters - even the Programmers reference is a separate volume.

[mister_e]

Euh yeah family reference manual... that's what i meant oups

All those manual, once binded, looks pretty impressive on the shelf

[rmteo]

I don't know about impressive, but I can tell you that they are HEAVY!!!

Right now, I have on my shelf 15 bound manuals with 750-800 pages each just for the PIC devices.

[PICKYPIC]

Nothing feels like the warm touch of paper and ink that can be studied and sketched on with a pencil etc, I still haven't found the perfect ebook reader software. Those binders pile up to a huge waste of natural resources though :-(