Assembly to Basic Coding

I'm new to the µC world and have been studying the instruction set for PICmicro 16Fxxx chips. After realizing that I was making it harder than it realy is and that it isn't much different than the assembly programing I used to do on my Atari 800XL (back in the early '70s) I find the 35 operand codes, bank switching and 8-bit manipulation easy to understand. Much, much easier that the 64-bit 'Honeybuckets' (Honeywell mid-size computers) I programmed in the mid-'80s. :wink:

With this said, and many years experience with BASIC, I would like to find out more about PIC BASIC compilers from those who do BASIC programming for µC's. For now I will be programming 16Fxxx and 18Fxxx DIP chips.

1. Is BASIC coding for µC's simular to BASIC for computer systems?

2. What is the basic difference between PIC BASIC and BASIC STAMP?

3. What BASIC compiler to you use and why did you choose it?

4. What Programming board do you use?

I don't want to start an option war so please respect the options of others.

1. My BASIC experience is limited but I think the two are fairly similar.

2. PIC basic is compiled to machine code and loaded intp a PIC. The basic stamp is a PIC but the PIC is running a BASIC interpreter - you load BASIC op codes into the stamp which are then interpreted at runtime.

Programming PIC Microcontrollers in BASIC

**broken link removed**

this would give you a good start and answer all your questions

bmcculla, Thanks for your reply. After looking into PIC BASIC, I agree that computer BASIC and PIC BASIC are fairly similar.

samcheetah, Great link! Thanks.