[time-nuts] Good (cheap) PIC chip choice for project?

[Chris Albertson]

Probably, one of the best advantages of AVR over PIC is that with avr you
can use the GCC compiler.  Gcc of course is the compiler used "everywhere"
and supports real ANSI C and has a good optimizer and it's free.   So if
you use AVR you can port most C code you find that was written for UNIX
directly to the AVR

As was said early in this thread, if you want to write in C, AVR is
designed from the ground up for C.  The PIC is older and has a very simple
assembly language that is easy to learn.   But the PIC C compilers are
either expensive or crippled.

The good thing about using gcc is that it also runs on the PC or Mac OS X
so you can write test cases and run the code on your desktop.  I lie to
unit test the software in the larger computer using data from files to
fully exercise the code before downloading it to the chip.  Using the same
compiler for the PC/Mac and the chip makes this easier.


On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Orin Eman <orin.eman at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 4:50 AM, Bob Camp <lists at rtty.us> wrote:
>
> > Hi
> >
> > One of the original starting points was a free tool chain. Paying major
> > money for a compiler is moving a bit far from that. You would have to do
> a
> > *lot* of home projects to justify that cost.
>
>
>
> Indeed.  I wouldn't pay commercial prices for a PIC C compiler for home
> projects.  The 'Lite' version of SourceBoost that I actually bought is a
> whopping $5 and in spite of its RAM/ROM limitations, it's been good enough
> for me.  If I ever sell a product that uses it, I'd need the commercial
> version at $150 - fair enough IMO.
>
> Orin.
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-- 

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California