As well as a complete course in programming this CD also includes a comprehensive suite of software tools that facilitates the development cycle highlighted in the previous screen. The image on the right shows the contents of the CD.

THE IDE
We have provided a special Integrated Development Environment (ASM-IDE) to go with this software. This is essentially a text editor to edit your ASM programs, with buttons that assemble your program into HEX code and then send it to the PICmicro. You will find that by using the IDE, the cyclical process of write, assemble, download and test will become very simple and quick.

For more information see the 'Using the IDE' page in the 'Getting started' section.

MPLAB
The PICmicro Assembly and Download software is supplied with this CD-ROM and is automatically copied into its own directory on your hard-disk. Following a successful installation of this course, the IDE will automatically locate the assembler and download software.

The assembler program is that designed by the PICmicro manufacturers, Microchip, and is included with their permission. It is part of a large suite of programs for professional code development called 'MPLAB. The assembler is colloquially just known as the MPASM Assembler. Its full documentation is not included with this CD ROM but it is obtainable direct from Microchip, as detailed in the Reference section.

PPP
The Download program (PICmicro Parallel Programmer, or PPP for short) loads the HEX code into the PICmicro. It has been specially developed to suit the development board associated with this CD ROM. Note that although PPP is included with this CD you will not 'see' it as a separate application. It is called up from the IDE in a seamless way which makes it appear as part of the IDE.

TASM
You may well have heard of other PICmicro assembly programs, such as TASM, for example. There is, in fact, very little basic difference in the way that programs are written for MPASM and TASM. The PICmicro command codes used are identical. It is simply a matter of there being very slight grammatical differences in the way that each program line is written in the text editor.

The first edition of this CD tutorial was based on TASM grammar, but it is recommended that MPASM is the dialect you write in as it is much more universally used. Only MPASM grammar is used in these tutorials. The MPASM assembler does not recognise TASM .ASM files, although the Send program does recognise TASM-generated .OBJ machine code files. All code files for this CD second edition are named commencing with TUTA, followed by a number and extension code. The first edition CD files all commenced with just TUT, followed by the number and extension - they are not recognisable to this second edition.

Note, too, that software written in TASM cannot be assembled through MPASM, and vice-versa. The program text lines must conform to the grammar of the assembling program.

It is stressed that the software text files MUST be in pure ASCII text formats without printer or display format commands embedded in them. If the PICmicro assembly software (MPASM) receives an "impure" file, the code may not be correctly assembled.