Re: Microchip's PIC32 : comments needed

hi again,

larwe wrote:
On Jan 3, 2:42 am, whygee <why...@xxxxx> wrote:

* What do you think about the development tools ?
(for example, i have no XP or Vista box,
and buying a $800 computer just for
using a $49 kit is a bit... tough)

$800? I am using an old HP Pentium III (900MHz Pentium III) laptop I
bought off eBay for $70. It came with a licensed copy of Windows 2000,
which is adequate for the task.

Well, I am currently using a P3 laptop (500 MHz) here, under Debian,
and the same, but 700MHz version, under w2k, for some electronics stuffs.
The sad fact : MCHP's MPLAB9 does not work/install anymore on w2k (i use the
earlier MPLAB7.60 now). And guess what... MPLAB8 is the first version that supports PIC32.
I'm screwed and angry. Same with the FPGA proto board that i am
currently ordering, and this one is going to suck more RAM than i can afford
(after buying the Actel kit, which recommends 2BG, while my best laptop
has 256MMB...).

Well... I also just got a PicKit2 and this sucker's driver installer
wanted w2k SP4 (i'm somewhere in SP3).
fortunately, this idiot just looks at the.... InternetExplorer version !
I fortunately figured that editing a stupid key in the registry allowed
it to install (from version 5.00.0xyz to 5.01, and it works ok).
I guess that it's not going to work with MPLAB8.

Oh, and i'm fed up with having to "patch" a proprietary system
every time other proprietary (free as in free beer) SW have to be installed.
And my computers are getting old. I have almost nothing < y2k :-/

I do not as yet have a compelling application for this particular
chip, I have experimented only for the sake of learning a bit about it.

What did you try with it ? What succeeded and what failed ?
have you found something particularly good or bad ?

I'll consider it for new designs, but likely will continue to use ARM.

I have looked at ARMs in the last years but have never found something that suits
me, or easy-to-obatin chips. I can play with someone else's ARM9 proto board,
but the environment (Debian Linux) makes it useless for my application
(hard real time stuffs, where 99% of the CPU is needed).

With the new PIC32 family, i have the hope that it starts anew,
cleanly and that i'll be able to keep up in the future...
ARMs are already so developped, and have so many versions, that i can't follow.
Finally, being an old MIPS enthusiast, i can't stay calm :-)

YG
.

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