A collegue at my work have the latest month (dec 2006) designed this awesome motherboard-development board for the 40 pin PIC16F877A and the PIC16F88 microcontrollers. It's also OK to use with the old PIC16F84A or the newer PIC's 16F627/628/648 circuits.
Nice work, don't you think? Done with Eagle CAD and double etched with amateur equippment (not so easy). We have to use a "punch trough kit" and a lot of "hands on" to get it ready. If it works like we think it should we maybe order som cards from a real PCB designer such as Cogra Pro here in sweden.
This board is equipped with a 2 x 20 standard LCD which you via contacts and cable connect to any pins you want. You don't have to use it if you don't want to. Just connect another one outside the board. It has a contact for ICSP and 5V power, MCLR reset and a pulldown 10k LVP if you want.It has a socket for changing crystals or chosing to have internal crystal (16F88) If you use external crystal there is an option for Rs resistor. I understand this is uncommon to use with most crystals but the option is still there.
Its designed together with another board which is to be connected to this one. That board, testboard, will have all the bells and wissles you need to develop. LED's, buttons, DIP's, trimpots for analog simulations and so on. It will also have a lab board attached for even more possibilities. I hope I can update this pages with more information and also the schematic on this sweetie. Probably in nextcoming weeks. If I only had more time :-) ....
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