No. 140 BAEC August 2001 Newsletter

Video Fader Box by Mohammed Bashir (aged 17 when written). With Analogue Circuit Diagram. Powered by a 9V battery with coax input and output.
How to get started in PIC Programming by Eric Edwards GW8LJJ. About the PIC 16F84. First details a digital circuit to count in binary on LEDs using a 555 Timer and CMOS 4024 7-bit (÷128) Ripple Counter Chip plus 2 resistors, 3 capacitors and 7 LEDs. Constructed on plugboard, no soldering. Then shows how a PIC can do the exact same thing using only one IC (Integrated Circuit) with only 2 resistors, a capacitor and again off course 7 LEDs. The PIC is programmed using a PIC BASIC compiler (PBC) to produce HEX (Hexadecimal, base 16: 0-9 + A-F) code. So no need to know about op-codes, assembler, the accumulator, status register (flags: zero, carry, division-by-zero error...), stack, ALU (Arithmetic and Logic Unit, does logic and addition) fetch-execute cycle... Then goes on to show how the PIC can be re-programmed to do a different task. Impossible for the digital circuit! Less components and more functions.