How much interest is there in tools for working with Microchip PIC's

Question

and other MCU's on Arch?
Just thought I would ask, as if there is much interest, and I note that there must be some, we could form a group to ensure packages and support is there.

Answer 1

Parallel and serial ports are a rare sight these days so I guess the best route is to go usb. There are usb to serial converters but I don't know how well that will work.
Using usb can be troublesome, starting something from scratch is not easy, or you borrow some code to write the code to put in the bridge ucontroller and the code to write a driver or it will take ages to complete.
Also programming the first versions of the bridge software into the bridge ucontroller can prove to be tricky if you have to rely on home made programmers. Programming more recent chips with the serial or parallel port is tricky (maybe the parallel port can do a bit better here).
There is also the issue of building the pcb for the programmer board, powerful and feature rich chips come only in packaging with smd pin spacing or smaller, this makes assembly at home very difficult, I'm not even considering making the pcb at home, anything with a packaging smaller than dip and you already start to have problems.
Debugging the hardware at home is not trivial either, voltages can be easily measured with a voltmeter but checking things like signal timing and synchronization between signals requires and oscilloscope, sometimes you only realize that you need to rewrite or tweak some piece of code after you see the signals with an oscilloscope.
Also it's not fun to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of doing it, there must be already some work done out there that can probably be improved and expanded.
To summarize, using serial/parallel/usb to serial converter may make things easier to program on both ends (pc and brigde code), usb has the potential to be faster, more flexible and more future proof but will make things a lot harder to do. The prototype programmer board must be easy to build if you want to get the parts and assemble it yourself.