response 1 of 1:

Mar 15 03:00 UTC 1999

I've done some PIC work including projects that have used the 12C509, 16C63,
16C65, and 16C622.  My projects have included a track 2 magnetic stripe
reader, a POCSAG pager decoder, and I'm currently using a PIC in a piece
of test equipment I'm designing at work.  I've used both the DOS and windows
based assemblers from Microchip, and I've used Microchip's windows-based
simulator and Parallax's DOS-based simulator, and am more or less happy
with both of them (exept that the Parallax one apparently isn't supported
any more so it only knows about the older types of PICs.)  I've never used
the C compiler so I can't comment on it.  The PICs are incredibly fun devices
to use.
 
My track 2 magnetic stripe reader used the PIC12C509, an 8-bit microcontroller
in an 8-pin package.  It has 41 bytes of RAM and when I was finished with my
code I was counting the amount of free RAM in terms of bits, not bytes.  In
fact, I had one bit of free RAM.  Had plenty of program space left over,
though.

I use a Needham's EMP-20 device programmer to burn the chips.  There are less
expensive ways of programming them but since I already had the device
programmer I used.