arhi
Member
Ya, Windoze has the best microcontroller tools. I've done some stuff with Piklab, but I run a windoze box at my electronics table. It does dual-boot Ubuntu, but normally runs Windows.
sounds like it .. thing is, my desktop is linux only (fedora) and my job requires linux / osX .. so windoze is not an option for me .. I have one box that is windoze only that I use for elco (when I have time) but would love to have at least dev tools on linux ... anyhow, I'm now trying to dedicate one "room" to elco stuff, and idea is to put spare lap there with windoze (I have some 17" asus w2c hanging around collecting dust and that seams to be ideal elco dev box ... the only thing missing is the serial port, but .. )
As for you never trying GCC for PIC, have you used any of Microchip's compilers? They're all GCC based, as far as I know.
I used only C18 .. not sure if it is gcc based as they would have to be GPL too then, don't they ? The other microchip compilers I never tried... In general, I do not get why they charge for the compilersas putting out there a "good" fully loaded dev tool for free should improve hw sales imho...
I hate to sound like a broken record, but...
I got PICC for some 20$ (only up to 16F, so cannot make 18F hex) with some ftdichip evaluation kit and I really like it ... mikroC is 99E (donno if that is "local price" or is same price for "all around the world") and I purchased it as it is a local company, few hundred meters from my appt and I really liked the easyPic hw and all the "test boards" they sell ...
as for 18F uC's .. with so many app notes written in C18, and microchip standing behind it .. i still vote for C18 as "best" irrelevant to the price as the free version lack only optimisation, it is not limited to size of the code nor anything else.
all in all, with 18F being "better" in many ways then "smaller" ones, and prices pretty much "same", I moved 99% of r&d to 18F ...