D I G I T A L Page

   My present area of interest (or at least the one that has been taking most of my time of late) is programmable microcontrollers.   Since "cheap" has a lot to do with both commercial and "hobby" applications, the main contender here is the PIC.   Note all the links!

   Well, at least the PIC used to be the outright leader in the "do-it-yourself" or small development market, but there is now the Atmel AVR series and the latest contender; an "enhancement" of the PIC called the .

   It's not too obvious at present how the Scenix is faring, but it appears they are shipping dev. kits in the "States" and rest assured, our local Australian distributor   Bob Nicol is on the hunt for when it comes.

   I have yet to try either of these latter two, but I think I had better get onto the Atmel sometime.   Just as soon that is, as I have fully come to grips with the PIC which is certainly the well- established device and for which I have the kits, samples etc.   And, I might add, the applications.   Lots of them

   There are links by the hundred(, thousand, ...), but I shall try to focus on those I have found the most rewarding so far.   Things such as using stepper motors from recycled floppy drives (I am still collecting these in expectation of all sorts of uses!), interfacing these or all sorts of other things to the IBM-PC parallel printer port ([1] and [2]), lots more.

   Here's an absolutely teriffic one! The pin-outs of all (well, most) of those connectors on your computer boards. Joakim Ögren's Connector Page, part of his Hardware Book.

   In addition, having spent an inordinate amount of time both reading and composing (some call it de-composing!) replies to e-mail messages on the various microcontroller discussion lists, I am using my hard-writtten replies (sigh!) as the bases for a mini- library of  FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) monographs.   I offer these here for public perusal, scrutiny, comment and I hope, benefit.

   This page, I remind you, is DEFINITELY in mid- construction.   What about   Y2K

   Now, should I have supplied any links above to download files which are in PDF format, or you are seriously going to follow up on the PIC links, you will of course need a WIN95 (or other)   Acrobat Reader.