Wow. electrotech dropped off the internet for a minute or two..
Philba:
I hate to say it, but you are right. AVRs have (or maybe had) the better parts, but they have no clue. That is why I said, Microchip, I am back.
No support, I imagine they got a ton of calls and have a special number, but I have never called anyone there and now I need help and they are not there for me. Guess I did not buy enough parts to get the special number. Even a response to my EMAIL to say we can not help you would have been nice.
My thoughts...
AVR ASM is a little more work than the PIC. But price, features and speed they have (or maybe had). And a friend of mine wrote a little basic compiler that I get for free, so simple jobs take longer to wire than write the code. So it was all good.
PIC ASM is not that bad really... Their parts have come down in price, and it looks like the have added all the features. And they are fast enough.
I think Atmel makes a lot of big sales, and the smaller guys are not a priority for them. I see ATMEL only in commercial products.
But when I did used the PIC chips I never had a problem (long as you put a resistor on RST and decouple well). And I learned that real fast. And this is from a guy that has tubes of 16F84.. Things might have changed.
I am still waiting on my PIC compiler to show in the mail (looks like next week now, and a holiday here in the States Monday). And EMAILed glitchbuster, no response by tomorrow, back to mouser.com.