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The circuits needed to build bistables, registers and counters are described and you will understand the importance of tristates, decoders and memory as building blocks for microcontroller systems.

Matrix die: one of four projects described in detail

The book tells you something about what is going on inside a PIC. In the first few Chapters, you can find out about bits and bytes and about binary arithmetic.

The latest version of MPLAB® can be downloaded free of charge from the Microchip Inc. web site: http://www.microchip.com

The PIC16F627 and PIC16F627A are versatile new and inexpensive PIC devices, with lots of powerful features. Once you have a working knowledge of one PIC, it is easier to understand the features and capabilities of other devices.

Discovering PICs is the brand new book from DOCTRONICS which introduces you to assembly language programming using the PIC16F627/PIC16F627A and MPLAB®, the Microchip Inc. integrated development environment.

In addition to the book, the Discovering PICs package includes a CD-ROM with the complete text of the book in Acrobat® *.pdf form, together with the *.asm source files for all the programs, various resource files and Internet links. You also get the PCB for the wavy wand project, so that you can build your own.

Later Chapters consist of guided projects which show you how to develop a new PIC system. The matrix die and wavy wand projects are straightforward, but you can also follow the step by step development of more sophisticated games timer and pulse monitor circuits.

Discovering PICs is the ideal follow on from simple flowchart PIC programming. Using assembly language gives you a much better understanding of how PICs work. You can access all the capabilities of the PIC, including true interrupts, look up tables, voltage comparators and the sleep function.

1 : Running before you learn to walk

2 : Think binary

3 : Bistables, registers and counters

4 : Tristates, decoders and memory

5 : PIC architecture

6 : PIC instruction set