Hi John



 RM> not if it's too expensive or complicated. Remember my ancestry, and

 RM> the copper wire legend (see The Profiles on Aunt Teddy's homepage)



 JT>  I don't currently have web access, but I can imagine.. :-)



How was copper wire invented? Two Scotsmen found a penny.



 JT> If it is just a square wave, you don't really need a PIC, as it can

 JT> be done cheaper with garden variety components.



 RM> Marginally cheaper. A PIC and crystal is typically less than $15.



 RM>  the newer 8 pin 12C5xx PICs are $1.50 each in lots of 10. I

 RM> think I'm in love...



 JT>  What are they like?  I was doing a bit of homework a while back, and was

 JT> not too impressed with the pics at that stage.



The first 8 pin devices, the 12C508 and 509, are remakes of the

16C5x series - 512 or 1024 bytes eprom, 25 or 41 bytes ram, one

timer with prescaler, no interrupts. But at tat price, I reckon I

can find uses for them. There's a successor, 12C6xx from memory,

that includes an a/d, but all info is pre-release so far.



I'm getting a few 16C73's soon. They have 4k eprom, 192 bytes ram,

8 bit a/d, SPI/I^2C, and a uart. Should be useful doing odd jobs

round the house, talking on a (yet to be invented...) RS485 bus.



 JT> They didn't have too much info available. I believe the situation

 JT> has changed, and much is available now.



Heaps of info is available. The databooks and assemblers are free

downloads from their website, although the company seems to be a

multi-headed monster, I can't find a simple summary of their entire

pic range anywhere.



The supply situation, however, sucks. There are two companies I

know of that are importing them, Hartec and Zatec, and Hartec is

probably going to drop them soon. The bloke at Zatec offered a

reason - the makers will sell small quantities of the erasable

eprom parts, but want a minimum order of several thousand dollars

for any of the plastic OTP parts. Since there are heaps of

different devices (30? 50? I'm guessing), and several speed and

mode variants of each device (in plastic), it seems that the makers

aren't interested in small resellers.



RS and Farnell sell many of the earlier devices, but their prices

are phenomenal, typically 5 times the price that Hartec or Zatec

offer. Erasable parts from H or Z are cheaper than plastic OTPs

from RS or Farnell.



Cheers



--- PPoint 1.88