Re: [Flashforth-devel] PIC18F66K22

[craig b. <dab...@ya...>]

I've been playing with FlashForth for a while and using it for device implamentation for a couple years.  I enjoy the interactivity that assembler doesn't have by itself.  I haven't used the high pin-count chips either (they don't have dip packages that fit my prototyping boards), but I've been very happy with the 26k22 and 46k22 performance.  Getting them up under FF-50 is a lot easier than FF-3.8 was, the config files are much more consolidated now.  I still recommend explicitly defining all the chip config bits, especially for the muxed pins.  Grep through the source for peripheral setups and feature-pin assignments.  Start simple disabling extensions you don't need (like multitasking and program interrupts) and figure these more obscure capabilities out as you need them.  The docs available actually have enough info, but they aren't quite a walk-through guide yet.

If you have a history with FORTH, you know how close to the hardware it runs...  Mike's implamentation is impressivly clean.

The second UART is a small wonder in its own right.  I recommend keeping the console on UART1 so you can concentrate the processor's attention on UART2.  My PC couldn't deal with anything above 460800 baud but a half-dozen 26K22-s and a BeagleBone White could all converse at 921600.  Not shabby at all and the embedded assembler makes it fairly easy to implament.  The 9-bit mode helped a lot.

Have at it!  Good luck, and have fun!

craig bair

OBTW: Banging the SPI config of the MSSP is impressive for an 8-bit processor (grin).  And it can even bit-bang at almost 1 M-bit...