Newbie questions

rbevers · Joined: 30 Jun 2006 Posts: 6

Hi,

I'm planning on starting programming PIC microcontrollers. I was thinking of buying a ICD-U40. But there are some things I don't quite get yet and I need someone with experience to explain it.

The way I understand it is that I have to make certain pins available to the programmer for in circuit programming. but if I connect those pins out of circuit I can also program the PIC. Or is an external oscilator required.

second, the website says: "Please note, the ICD-S40 and ICD-U40 only work with CCS Software and not MPLAB® IDE. "
Am I correct in assuming that this only refers to the debugging features. meaning I can only debug an application that has been created using CCS compilers, but writing and compiling can be done in MPLAB.
Or does this mean that I will have to purchase a CCS compiler as well for the U40 to work?

I hope someone can answer these questions. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Richard

PCM programmer · Joined: 06 Sep 2003 Posts: 21708

This thread will answer a lot of your questions:
http://www.ccsinfo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26954

This page has descriptions of the tools, though I would disagree
with a few things. For example, the ICD2 isn't "medium to hard"
to use. And the command-line compilers come with the 100+
examples the same as the CCS IDE does.
http://www.ccsinfo.com/content.php?page=newtopiccwhat

If you have more questions, you should probably post them
in the main forum, instead of this debugger forum. Then more
people will see your post. Link to main forum:
http://www.ccsinfo.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=1

rbevers · Joined: 30 Jun 2006 Posts: 6

Thanks for your reply.

I checked out the posts you provided. That combined with some more searches in the forum and documentation provided by CCS gave me a good idea of what to do.

That is get the ICD-U40