Both MPLAB and the EB006 PICmicro Multiprogrammer board can be used with a number of different PICmicro devices. This section will explain how to set up MPLAB and mLoader to use a different chip, and any changes in your C program that may be required.

Setting up MPLAB
MPLAB allows you to set which chip to use. You can change it when creating a new project or change your current project via 'Project Properties' in the 'File' menu (File > Project Properties...), here you can filter the family of the chip to find it easier or select from the list of all the supported devices.

Setting up PPP / mLoader
You should also make sure that the PPP programmer has the correct chip selected in its options screen by starting PPP manually from the start menu, by default it's under 'Matrix Multimedia/PPPv3/PPPv3', and then click the 'Configure PICmicro' button. Here you can tell the programmer what type of chip you want to use, and how you want it configured. We recommend that you use jsut the simple options screen until you are really familiar with PICmicro microcontrollers.

Changes to your C programs
For some PICmicro devices other than the default PIC16F1937, certain extra capabilities of the chip may be turned on by default.

For example the PIC16F87x series have analogue capability on PORTA which is enabled by default, meaning that PORTA cannot be used for digital I/O unless this analogue capability is specifically disabled within your own code by setting the ADCON1 register to 0x06.

Similarly, the PIC16F627 device has an analogue comparator function on PORTA which should be turned off by setting the CMCON register to 0x07.