PIC programmers? More generic programmer? Port?

[Chuck Guzis]

On 3/3/21 2:15 PM, Anders Nelson wrote:
> I was a field application engineer for Microchip from 2008-2011, making
> POCs for big name customers in the bay area using 8, 16 and 32-bit PICs.
> 
> You will likely find that Microchip support is awful, even if their
> products are pretty neat. There was an Arduino port for PICs called
> "ChipKit" but I don't know if that's still being developed.
> 
> The PicKit 3 is decent, if pretty slow. The ICD3 and later versions are
> good. MPLAB X is excellent IMO. I should still hold a design partner
> discount so if you want to get some tools, contact me offline and I'll
> see if I can save you some money.
> 
> That all said, I'm a huge fan of the STM32 ARM devices and the community
> is nearly as good as Nordic, and what Atmel used to be before it was
> acquired by Microchip.

I remember getting a PIC32 Uno32 from Digilent (long given away) that
featured a Arduino-compatible library.   It was interesting for the time.

https://reference.digilentinc.com/reference/microprocessor/uno32/start

Digilent (wisely) seems to have dropped the MCU line of boards
completely and now concentrates on FPGA.

But the array of ARM-Cortex boards out there is wonderful.  I've still
got a parts box full of various AVR and PIC MCUs, but nowadays, I find
myself reaching for an STM32 ARM.   STM's documentation can be daunting,
if you're interested in things at the low level, however.  1000 pages
seems to be about the minimum ante in terms of technical documentation,
but then there's a lot of functionality built into those bits of fused sand.

--Chuck