Compiler refuses to compile

[skimask]

In the posts above, you have "INCLUDE 16F877A.INC"
Do you actually have that in the program? MCS/PBP already take care of that for you.

I think I shall have to strip it all off the computer and reload again.

Doesn't sound like a bad idea...clean it all out... While your at it, spend the $25 and upgrade to PBP 2.50A.

Here's the way I do a fresh reload. In my mind, I start from the PIC itself, and work my way backward, to the PBP source code itself...

1) Load the programmer software/hardware/firmware. Test it out, make sure it recognizes and handles the programmer the way it needs to handle it.

2) Load the latest version of MPLAB with any patches that need to be in there. Ensure that MPLAB can compile, and puts any result HEX files where you can find them.

3) Load PBP and any patches that need to be applied. Try it out, compile a file, assemble it (whether you do it, or you set up PBP to let MPLAB do it, either way)

4) Load MCS, connect it to PBP, connect it to MPASM.

5) Try it all out.

And don't load all of this into your "My Documents" folder. There seem to be the occassional 'long path' issues. It seems to work best for me if I put PBP in the root dir of C:, and MPLAB and MCS in their normal 'program files' folder.

[CodeShredder]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all your advice, I have reloaded all the software elements and can now compile and load programs onto the PIC, but not sure why the compiler did not work in the first place.

After reloading the software I still got the same error messages about the assembler file, so looked again at the compile and program options. Under assembler it said 'not defined', the find buttons were greyed out and the check box saying Use MPASM was unchecked, so I checked that and compiled a program without any problems. During compiliation some progress dialog boxes came up which I have never seen before so I am assuming that in previous instalations a different compiler was installed. Does that sound likely?

After four evenings of frustration the joy that a little flashing LED can bring is surprising!

Thanks to all who assist with these newsgroups, as a web programmer and not an electronics engineer I can only see half the picture and the information gleaned from these posts and the archives is invaluable.

Cheers,
Mark

[mackrackit]

Do not know how far along you are in electronics and maybe you have been here
http://www.parallax.com/tabid/535/Default.aspx
There is a lot of good info and if you work through the experiments and adapt them to PBP I bet you will gain.