Programming PIC using CDC?

[Smaug]

our programmer is always programing pics for various projects and he doesnt use mplab

[tdlrali]

I am fairly certain that you have to compile in MPLAB, its all proprietary to microchip. My team codes in eMacs and then builds in MPLAB

As long as you have the compiler tools, you can build your own tool chain, and you won't have to use MPLAB.

[tseres]

for non-FIRST microcontrollers, i use a microchip PICSTART PLUS programmer and CCS-C compiler. it has its own IDE, but i prefer to use it with MPLAB.

www.sparkfun.com has a lot of PIC resources

[dtengineering]

Well, you could always look up the opcodes for each machine language instruction, and the microchip .hex file format and write your code in a text editor... but I'm guessing that you probably don't want to get quite that "bare bones".

Alternatively, you can presumably write your C code in any text editor and then compile it using PICC Lite (a freeware compiler, available from Microchip) and then compile it using command line options.

These are both kind of silly options since MPLAB makes doing both of these tasks much easier... maybe you want to avoid C or assembly language all together... in which case I would recommend PIC BASIC Pro or PIC BASIC (I much prefer the pro, even though it is more expensive) from www.melabs.com

They also have their own IDE... MicroCode Studio, I believe it is called.

Jason

P.S. If you can possibly run MPLAB, I recommend learning to use it... some of the emulator and debugging functions are quite useful.