A Guide To PIC Microcontroller Documentation/Section 2 - Processor-family based guide to documentation

Detailed analysis of controller family documentation

In this section we will be taking an in depth look at the main documentation for one controller out of each PIC microcontroller family. In each case the key documents will be listed and then the datasheet will be analysed chapter by chapter to highlight the information that is provided, and how related information can be found in the cases where the documentation is rather sparse.

In each case we will select a device that is the largest in its class in terms of performance, memory and number of peripherals. All other devices in that family will contain a sub-section of the information contained in the analysed device. There is a lot of similarity between families, and therefore there will be lots of repetition between chapters here, but since each engineer only focusses on one family or device at one time this method of documenting the datasheets here should prove to be most beneficial to the reader.

Further reading

• http://microchip.wikidot.com/
• The PIClist is a mailing list of people discussing Microchip PICmicros and related devices and the things people do with them. There's a huge amount of useful code in the archives and wiki-like library.
• The Electronics Engineering stackexchange often discusses PICmicros.