has microchip stopped doing free xc8 compiler?

[large_ghostman]

i have decided to switch to xc8 compiler mainly because microchip says that it will stop supporting c18, i also thought i might as well switch to mplabx, i went to get a free download of XC8 and it appears they no longer do one!! and the cheapest one is £730!

so does that mean in the near future when microchip stops supporting C18 they will no longer provide a free compiler for there products? if that is the case then it would make more sense to stick with C18 for now and save up for say MIKROC which is cheaper!


edit
sorry its £307 n0t £703

 

[large_ghostman]

apparently not!!! its just that they have grayed out the free version in there list, but if you go hunting you find hidden away on a side bar a download for it they have one the worse sites i have ever been on!

 

[DirtyLude]

It seems pretty straight forward to download it from here. Your saying it's greyed out for you?

**broken link removed**

 

[large_ghostman]

no i googled for it and got this link https://www.microchip.com/pagehandler/en_us/devtools/mplabxc/
its greyed out on there. then i went to the MC forum and the announcement from the moderator that the new version was out gave a link but the page redirected me back to the link i posted, what didnt show on my screen because its a small screen is there is a link on the left bar that takes you to the download!
But it's still confusing to have the page like it is in my link, and is pretty typical of the microchip website! its a real pain to navigate

 

[DirtyLude]

Ya, it says right under Free with two red asterix, 'Click Download on left'. Still it does seem odd that they wouldn't put the link right in the table rather than just a reference.

 

[large_ghostman]

i was on the small notebook, something has been changed because the original links in forum dont work! maybe a ploy to get people to buy it

 

[Ian Rogers]

You just download the full version... If you don't insert a licence key it will not optimise..... Its the same package...

 

[large_ghostman]

how much difference does the optomise make?

 

[Ian Rogers]

Loads.... I run XC8 pro.. Its compiled output is a lot smaller.

I have the free version on my other PC so I can test other code from users that have the same version... I don't like to give code that doesn't work...

One of my tutorials ( in the link ) would not fit onto the pic16f628a so I used a pic16f648a to run the code..

The assembler code from Nigel's tutorials fitted fine.... After re-compiling in the full version it fits onto the smaller chip..