[chbot] gcbasic / bootloader ?

[Andrew Errington]

On Mon, February 25, 2008 08:36, Chris Hellyar wrote:
> Anyone on the list using gcbasic for pics with or without a bootloader?
>
> I've lent my father a couple of BS II's and he's got keen on using them
> for a few projects (Model trains and Ham radio), but they are a looking
> like being a bit pricy for his budget.
>
> He's not interested in learning ASM, so I have suggested picaxe or
> gcbasic and a bootloader as alternatives.

I've never used the Picaxe, but it is available locally (at SICOM) and has
good reviews (for what it is).  I program in assembly, with my bare hands.

If your father is not interested in assembler, why not suggest embedded C?
 If you give him some boilerplate for main() and some examples of
accessing the I/O and other hardware he can have the speed of assembler
with the higher-level environment of C.  Much better than BASIC, and
transferable to other PICs and other micros.

Having said that, I just took a look at the GCBASIC page
<http://gcbasic.sourceforge.net/index.html> and it looks great!!  If you
do go that route, please keep us posted.  I'd be very interested to hear
about your and your father's experiences getting started and using
GCBASIC.

Andrew