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looking to start with 18f series, sugest chips

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True, but the most common response for AVR related help is "if you want help visit www.avrfreeks.com". I hear they are somewhat hardcore. I am not too sure how they respond to newbie questions.

Having said that. They are good stuff.

I'm a Arduino AVR fan but I would never recommend the avrfreeks site for beginners looking for help unless you are really thick skinned. Many there cope a real attitude. Just reading the posts was enough for me to not register and so haven't ever posted there. The Arduino site does have a very helpful and patient forum however.

**broken link removed**


Lefty
 
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I haven't been back to AVRfreaks in almost a year in a half, has it gotten that bad? I got some pretty decent help and I started from the ground up. I was a regular poster for close to two years. But whatever you do don't EVER get into a PIC fight there they'll rip your still beating heart and drink it like a fine wine =) no one will begrudge you for working with PICs but the pro and con threads there have been beat to death I think the moderators will ban in a heartbeat. Much like trying to get converts to AVR on a PIC forum. I would recommend doing what you do in any forum. Lurk for a while get your bearings on the people so you know who to avoid and what topics not to bring up and then start asking questions, after you've done your homework.
 
Futz I like that bread board real neat. Looks good I never could take that much time to bend my wires. I have some IC testers that look like a clothes pin just clip it on and plug
in your programmer and your set to go
 
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Futz,
Where does one purchase the power supply you used with your breadboard?
At **broken link removed** in Calgary. They have changed them a bit since I bought my three. I'm not positive that I like the look of the new ones. Should buy one and see how they are, I guess. They never came with that big heat sink either - I added that.

I have ordered occasionally from HVW since around 2000. Good people. HVW also owns Solarbotics Ltd.. Solarbotics have some excellent products as well.

------------

Other companies sell similar products. Sparkfun has one, for instance. I think Acroname does too, and I remember there being others.

be80be said:
Looks good I never could take that much time to bend my wires.
I have three sets of **broken link removed**, but I always run out of the good sizes, so I've added piles of my own, made from 22AWG telephone wire. I have several lifetimes' supply. Electricians throw away enough wire on jobs to supply every electronic geek in the country forever.
 
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If you are considering moving up from the 12F and 16F series PICs don't rule out the 24F, 30F and 33F series PICs. None of these have data bank switching issues because there are no banks. Another cool thing is mapping Flash memory space into data address space, giving you read access to the flash memory with ordinary instructions.
 
There must be some reason that hobbyists stop at the 18F line? I dont know what it is.
 
There must be some reason that hobbyists stop at the 18F line? I dont know what it is.
Probably mostly because that's all they need (or more than they needed already). Many of the higher end chips are 3.3V, rather than good old 5V, so that scares off some people. Interfacing some things can be just a little bit more difficult than at 5V, but it's not really such a big thing. You learn some new tricks is all.

Also, a lot of people posting here have mentioned that they think those bigger, better chips are "more complex" and are too tough for them to figure out. They're really not! They're just more of the same, only with more peripherals and memory and wider registers. Don't be freaked by bigger chips. They're actually easier to use in many ways than tiny ones.
 
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There must be some reason that hobbyists stop at the 18F line? I dont know what it is.
I really don't know since they are available in DIP packages which are hobbyist friendly. They generally have more RAM than 18Fs (4K to 16K for 24Fs, up to 32K for 33Fs and up to 8K for 30Fs). The 30F are 5 volt. The 24F are fairly cheap and working with 3.3V isn't a big deal anyway.
But if you are just flashing LEDs and doing simple tasks, then a 12F or 16F will be fine. It really depends on what you want to do with it.
 
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My favorite PIC18 at the moment is PIC18F26K20. It clocks up to 64MHz from internal oscillator, has nice analog features, great power consumption, and costs less than $4 in single quantities.
Just took a look. The **broken link removed** are sweet! :D I see they have a K version of one of my faves, the 4620. Such a fatty chip! :p

64 MHz @ 3.0 Volts on internal clock is pretty decent. And the 18F46K20 40-DIP is only $7.55 (Canadian) for a single. $5.60 US. Cheap.
 
There smd chips and like the pic 32 hard to find a brake out board for. Then try soldering it to one when you do get a board
 
If you have trouble with SMD soldering look at
SchmartBoard - The world's best circuit prototyping system
Bill first pointed these out to me. I have not used them but the idea is that raised matieral between the IC fingers make solder bridges impossible.

If you get a temperature controlled Iron SMD soldering can be done if you work at it. Old qtfp chips from PC can be used to get the art down.

Or for $40 you can get one ready to go.
USB 32-Bit Whacker - PIC32MX460 Development Board ( breadboard friendly )
https://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8971
**broken link removed**
It is a bit wacker which is fun but if you overwrite the boot loader you can use it as a regular target board.
 
I think your debuggers are non-variable VPP also. However, I'm yet to see a K-series killed by 12V VPP. The limiter circuit I am talking about won't limit anything if you forget to connect it's ground and I ran it with ground unconnected for many cycles on many PICs.
 
I'm thinking for now I'll order a 18f4620 and a PIC18F26K20, based on what little I have to go on. No chip had a vote from more than one expeirienced user so I just the ones that had 1 expeirienced vote and 1 newb vote, then I picked one from that list that was in the most common use so i could get it running more easily and one that had the newest functionality.

I figure that PDIP 600mil means its .6 inches wide, but what does SPDIP mean? I just need to be sure it can fit in a breadboard with .1in spacing.

Edit: ok, so spdip seems to have a smaller pitch between the pins. I'm trying to figure out if the PIC18F26K20 even comes in a DIP that will fit a breadboard.
 
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