Robert GawronI'm soldering/programming this device and things I've learned so far about PIC microcontrollers:
- Those low-end chips can be programmed in many variants of assembler dialect. There is at least MPASM, PIC-AS, GPASM. I've chosen PIC-AS because it's available in MPLAB IDE (environment by Microchip for writing software for PIC microcontrollers) and seems to be more modern. I don't get why they created a new version of assembler dialect, what was wrong with the older MPASM?
- MPLAB IDE has dropped support for AFAIK the most popular hobbyist level programmer - PICKit3. There is some added/kept support for it in MPLAB IPE tool, but for me PICKit3 doesn't enumerate in available devices there.
- There is an open source alternative for flashing those chips (PICkitminus) and it works fine.
- Microchip provides their IDE based on NetBeans (NetBeans=Java=slow), but they also created a bunch of plugins for VS Code. The project needs to be once created in MPLAB IDE and then it can be imported and built in VS Code. Nice.
- The mentioned PICkit tool has a command line version, so I think it's possible to script it from VS Code to flash the chip automatically.
- VS Code AFAIK doesn't have a nice plugin to color PIC-AS dialect of assembler for those chips, the best what I've found is this plugin.
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Once upon time, in the era of PICkit 2 there was a stand-alone programmer SW tool for it, with additional features like serial terminal and logic analyzer. Since then both the PICkit 2 and the SW tool have become obsolete as the Microchip has not supported them for over a decade, and now even the support for PicKit3 is going away. Nice tools. Obsolete!
But not quite! Thanks to Jarkko Kairus has been maintaining the PICkit 2 application now for years under the name PICkitminus adding lots of new devices to the device file and even updating the programmer FW to support even the latest PIC devices. And now also supporting PICkit 3.
For the PICkitminus go to https://github.com/jaka-fi/PICkitminus
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Yes, that's exactly the one I'm using now (I've fixed the link and it's description in my post), thanks for spotting and clarifying this.
The command line version is this one (I think from the same author): https://github.com/jaka-fi/pk2cmd
By the way it's a pity that Microchip has dropped the support, I think tis way they kind of make first steps for hobbyists or students harder, in the long term they should never do that IMHO.
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True that! Before PICkit 2 the PIC programmers were kind of expensive. The programming protocol was simple and so was the required HW, but scarcity kept the prices high. So the hobbyists made own simple HW, like David Tait's 7407+PNP for parallel port, which I used with a Linux box, or my KissPIC for Macintosh RS-422 serial port, using flow control pins. That was somewhat complex. :)
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