question about programmer

[tama182]

am i right in thinking that this board, can be directly linked to you computer, and then you just program the chip through mplab, if so under whater programmer would you use in mplab,

http://www.velleman.be/ot/en/product/view/?id=350903

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

am i right in thinking that this board, can be directly linked to you computer, and then you just program the chip through mplab, if so under whater programmer would you use in mplab,

http://www.velleman.be/ot/en/product/view/?id=350903

With none-MicroChip programmers (usually!) you save the assembled file to your hard drive, as a HEX file, then load that into your programmer software. This is basically what the MicroChip programmers do as well, but it's integrated seemlessly into MPLAB.

 

[tama182]

when i save a hex such

lcd.hex

it ends up being

lcd.hex.asm

even if i save under all files

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

when i save a hex such

lcd.hex

it ends up being

lcd.hex.asm

even if i save under all files

You don't 'save' it, you were just saving the assembler file - you need to assemble it, that creates the HEX file. I can't advise on how to do it with MPLAB, as I use MPASM directly.

 

[tama182]

ah got it, the hex file appears in the folder where you saved the assembler file, after you've built it,

 

[tama182]

hang on...........really you dont use mplab?, you just write the code, without even using all the simulation tools so you can see whats going on

 

[Jay.slovak]

Nigel is a Pro, he doesn't need to Debug :lol:

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I was programming PIC's way back before MPLAB, and the DOS simulator was really horrible! - never used it, and never used MPLAB either. I got used to programming without simulators, and (for that matter) designing circuits without simulators either!.

In fact I moved to Windows before MicroChip did!, the first Windows version of WinPicProg (still called PicProg back then) was for Windows 3 (before Win95 was released), and was the worlds first Windows PIC programmer - a LONG time before MicroChip made the move.

 

[Pommie]

I got used to programming without simulators, and (for that matter) designing circuits without simulators either!.

I was the same, I used PFE (Programmer's File Editor) to edit source files and the inbuilt shell command to run MPASM. About 4 months ago while trying C, I used MPLAB. I found it very easy to use and the simulator was very useful. I have since changed over to MPLAB for all (PIC) programming, all of which is in asm. The code I'm currently working on is nearly 3k long and most of it was developed using the simulator.

I also hadn't used a circuit simulator either but about 1 month ago I downloaded **broken link removed** and found it very easy to use, very useful and free.

Mike.