also...i have a book on the 16F84 and i am very new to microcontrollers, so i was thinking the 16F84 would be a good place to start...the book also mentions the newer, cheaper 16F628 and explains that there are a lot of program written for the 16F84 and 16F84A and it is easy to find them on the internet...so do you still think that i should forget about the 16F84 and go with the 16F628? it sounds like the 16F628 would be esier to set up in that there is more internals, like oscillators and D/A converters and so on....please let me know...thank you..