desijays

hello everyone,

I came across this pic prototype board on the mikroe website. the link is as follows.

http://www.mikroe.com/en/tools/pic-ready/

i just want to know what is the speed of the crystal connected to it.
I can see the crystal in the lower middle of the board but I can't figure out what speed crystal it is. Tried zooming in using a picture viewer. but it just got blurry.

And what are the small holes that are located on the lower left of the board for. They are in a 15 X 12 arrangement. That is 15 holes down and 12 holes wide.

I intend to use the 16f877a pic with it, if I eventually buy it.

Or is there any other better prototyping board i can buy

Thank you

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futz

It's an 8MHz

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futz

That's a prototyping area where you'd solder in stuff you want to experiment with. Pretty much a one-time thing.

I'd suggest going with something more standard than the MikroE stuff. Do you live in Europe? If not, then I suggest even more strongly to stay clear. It won't play nice with MPLAB, for one thing.

Get a Microchip PICkit 2 or a good clone like the Blueroom Junebug (which has a nice 18F1320 experimenter onboard) and some solderless breadboards and chips and components. MUCH more flexible and re-useable and better for learning.

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desijays

The thing is, I want a board where I can easily access the five ports of the pic16f77a. And that board must only have the crystal(preferrably 20MHz) and power supply circuitry so I can provide the power. I don't want something with LED's, LCD displays and all the other paraphrenalia. Easy access to the five ports is most important. I would like it to be small as well cos I intend to use it on a simple mobile robot.

I already have a programmer. So i will be programming the 16f877a on that and will be prototyping it on the 'yet to buy' prototype board.

Does the PICkit™ 2 have easy access to the 5 ports? There is a picture on the website but its too small to make any sense of it.


I don't live in europe by the way.

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Pommie

I'll second that.

Mike.

futz

How about a PICProto64 board then? You build it the way you need/want. Very flexible. I have one that currently has an 18F452 in it. They will work with a wide range of 40-pin PICS.

Or a Nightfire proto board.

Umm... sounds like you have a non-ICSP programmer with a ZIF socket? That's a terrible way to work, constantly moving the chip back and forth. With a decent programmer you just plug your ICSP cable into your target circuit and program the chip in place, quickly and easily.

The PICkit 2 is a programmer, not a dev board. It programs PICs via the ICSP cable. It's fast, works with virtually ALL PICs and was made to work seamlessly with MPLAB. The target PIC can be on a breadboard or a dev board or anywhere, almost.

Just out of curiosity, why does it have to be the 16F877A, exactly? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

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desijays

Actually I have a ICSP on my development board. The problem is the only port available for the user is portb and porta but i need access to portc for pwm functionality. All the other ports are connected to LED's, LCD, 4*4 keyad, pots, rtc, USB controller and the lot. So I can't use port c, port e or port d.

Thats why I need a board that has the bare minimum so the controller can work and easy access to all the ports.

And my development board doesn't have a ZIF socket. It is so tight on my development board I have to use a screw driver as a wrench to remove it, if I want to use it outside the development board. And like you said, it is hard to do that everytime and bad for the controller too.

The 16f877a is the only one I have right now with me. And if I go ahead and buy another one it will take 2 weeks atleast to get here.

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futz

Then a PICProto is a natural fit for you. You get full access to all pins. The ICSP takes two (well, three if you count MCLR), but you can even use those with some creative circuitry. Just build it the way you want it.

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desijays

Thank you futz. I'll check that out.

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An enginneer trys to see a world that has never been

futz

Here's a pic of my PICProto board. The LED display section is incomplete. I put a MAX232 onboard for RS232, but the chip is wide open aside from that.
picproto_800x600.jpgpicproto001_800x600.jpg
That double-row header can be connected to a breadboard with a short 40-pin IDE cable. At the breadboard end you use a Technological Arts adapter.

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