Page 30 - Making PIC Microcontroller Instruments and Controllers

'18 GEttlNG SIARTEOT Tl{E HAnDI{AFE Al{D SOFn AnE SEIUP

The adalress of the microEngineenng web site is www melabs com/index htm
If you have a CD-ROM burner on your computer (and if you do not' you should,get
one), it is well woth you I tir\te to now copt the entire unadulterated PIC Took folder
to o CD-ROM for safekeeping. Data on a CD-ROM is much more secure than the data
on a floppy disk or disketio anal the best time to make a copy of it is right now before
you -aie any chang"s to any of the data you received fiom the vendors
'
For the purposes of general discussion and expe mentation, we will always call the
.*ampL p-[ra thtt x being nanipulated "Utttled", while the lext file that is the
body of the program vr'ill be called

This is tbe file the compiler compiles for the microconfoller you are using to oeate
fhe HEX f,le it needs.
The I{EX file created from this program by the compiler will be referred 10 as
Un cr -fed. rlEX
We do it this way because ewry time Jou compiLe and 'att ct proqrun' the system aulo'-
m.aticatly saws th; prc|ram to disk at the same time. This means that you lose the old
progra m and cannoi go back lo it lf ) ou are \\ oru ng \ irh acomplicaled progmm thi'
.-"U..o*" u ,.ul ptoUt.m because lhere rrc lol' olgood recson" lo go back to lhe $ ay
things were. So, to;void this pitfall, every time you load a program from disk,/irst sale
ir as-Untitled.bas and then play with it all you wanf Then. when you have a viable prc-
cram, save il to lhe name rhal is dpprcpriale lor il Load lhe ne{t progBm dnd change
;is name to Untitled.bas and so on. I would even go so far as to recornmend that you
save each version of yoor prograrn with a version designation so that Blink bas 'flill be
"Untiiled.bas," and then re saved to disk as "Blinkvl 0 bas''' while
worked on as
''BlinkV|.0.bas would be \rorked on a\ "lJnlilledba- and then re sdved d\
"Blinkv I . l.bas," and so on. Though some tedium is involved in doing this, I can assure
you it will save you many headaches in the long rur'
NolGe The HEX fites created bl the PBP compilen can be loaded into the PIC nicm'
contmllerc with other soll !1re/loaders lt is not imPeratire that hardware pngrammers

Software Notes from

Labs
MicroEngineering

The following are some notes lrom microEngineering Labs regarding the software pro-
vided by them:

t Locate the CDs labeled PICBASIC PRO Compiler and microEngineerinq Labs