Low-cost development system for PICs

There can be no doubt that Microchip’s PIC microcontrollers have achieved general acceptance in the electronics industry and immense popularity among hobbyists. Here, a PIC development system is presented that will not break the bank. The system should allow you to test the hardware operation of a PIC you have managed to program yourself. For such a test it is often necessary to connect simple input/output devices like LEDs and switches to various PIC port lines. Well, that is perfectly possible using the prototyping area on the board used to build this project. Provision is also made to connect either an external clock, a quartz-controlled clock or an adjustable RC controlled clock to the PIC. The first option is particularly useful if you want to slow down program execution to a speed at which it becomes possible to verify the operation of individual instructions.