Does this look like an acceptable PIC16F72 eval kit?

[technix]

This chip is my first PIC bought from what seems like a NOS sweepsale. No eval kit found available elsewhere, I designed this, fitting PIC16F72 to Arduino form factor and interface. SPI and I2C are all wired Uno-style with the L13 LED.

Since this PIC is so small that it does not even have an UART, no USB USRT interface is included, but interruptable GPIO is wired to pins 0 and 1 to allow easier implementation of software UART using interrupts.

[Ian.M]

Use a six pin 0.1" pitch right angle header with the PICkit 2/3 pinout for the ICSP connections.

The advantages of pin interrupts for a software UART are vastly overrated. If you need to do full duplex comms its better to poll the pin from a timer interrupt at an integer multiple of the baud rate (minimum x2), which lets you use the same interrupt to run state machines for both transmission and simultaneous reception.  If you go down this route, its worth following the pinout of the PIC16F886 (TX on RC6, RX on RC7) so you can easily upgrade to a debug capable PIC wuth a hardware UART later when you find the PIC16F72 is too restrictive or frustrating.

[tszaboo]

I dont know any valid reason why would anyone use a PIC16F72 for any new project. Unless you have a millions of it already and you need a programmable and gate.

[technix]

Use a six pin 0.1" pitch right angle header with the PICkit 2/3 pinout for the ICSP connections.

The advantages of pin interrupts for a software UART are vastly overrated. If you need to do full duplex comms its better to poll the pin from a timer interrupt at an integer multiple of the baud rate (minimum x2), which lets you use the same interrupt to run state machines for both transmission and simultaneous reception.  If you go down this route, its worth following the pinout of the PIC16F886 (TX on RC6, RX on RC7) so you can easily upgrade to a debug capable PIC wuth a hardware UART later when you find the PIC16F72 is too restrictive or frustrating.

It got a little bit challenging for me to put the ICSP headers to the edge of the board so I decided to put it in the middle of the board and face up. Maybe will hamper debugging but at least works.

[technix]

I dont know any valid reason why would anyone use a PIC16F72 for any new project. Unless you have a millions of it already and you need a programmable and gate.

Maybe that is why the seller is blowing off their stock of PIC16F72's at this ridiculous price (US$.25/each) and I got a lot of them.

[Ian.M]

Buying them was a false economy.  Compare with PIC16F1512 which is as cheap as a dollar in quantity.  It doesn't need an external crystal for most applications, has far better peripherals, much lower power consumption and is debug capable.

However you have got them and they are slightly simpler to use than more modern midrange PICs so you might as well get your feet wet with them.