ANOTHER INTERESTING BOOK
David Benson of Square 1 Electronics wrote a very interesting and useful book on the PIC 16F84A called Easy Microcontrol’n (this book used to be called Easy PIC’n) that supports these investigations. It taught me a lot of things I did not know and had not even thought about. In this workbook you will reap some of the benefits of my learning expe- rience. I recommend that you get a copy of Easy Microcontrol’n to support your use of the PIC 16F84A. It has a lot of very useful information in it and will save you a lot of time and headaches. However, the book is comparable to a first course at the commu- nity college level, and I found it too dry, with the emphasis on doing things without a BASIC compiler. A BASIC compiler is the easy to use tool of choice in this workbook because of our interest in getting things done in a hurry as opposed to becoming PIC/ MCU experts in assembly language. The emphasis here is more in applied results rather than rigorous foundation level learning of assembly language programming. This does not in any way negate the usefulness of Benson’s book to those interested in understand- ing and using the PIC 16F84A and similar microcontrollers.
Caution All the programs in Benson’s book are in Assembly Language.
A FAST INTERNET CONNECTION IS A MUST
You absolutely must have an Internet connection because so much of the information you need is on the Internet. It is very helpful to have more than a standard phone line connection so get the fastest connection you can afford. A cable modem is strongly recommended. If you and a couple of neighbors can get together and form a local area network (LAN) and share a wireless (Wi-Fi) modem setup, it becomes a really inex- pensive way to get fast Internet service. The Wi-Fi signals have no problem reaching all the apartments in a small building and sometimes even the house next door. Amplifiers and repeaters are available to increase signal strength where necessary.
DOWNLOADING DATA SHEETS
One of the first things you need to download is the data sheets for the PIC 16F87X. You will in all probability end up using the smaller and less expensive PIC 16F84A for a lot of your initial projects, so it might be a good idea to download the information for that microcontroller while you are at it. As mentioned before, these files are avail- able from the Microchip web site and the information is free. However, the two docu- ments are about 400 pages all together, so you probably will not want to print it all out. You will, however, want to print some of the more commonly used information so you can refer to it whenever necessary. The rest should be stored on your computer so that you can call it up or search for what you need when you need it.
The Microchip Technology Corporation website is at www.microchip.com.
Finding what you need will be under “support” on their web site, and it is easy to download. Just follow the instructions provided on the site.