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WIZ-ASE (formally known as WIZPIC) is a complete development system for making assembly code for the PIC Micro chips. It is one of the very few programmes that allows you to drag and drop ready made code modules into your code, there is support for things like LCD's, hardware and software driven serial ports, i2C memory device, switches, input/output and lots more. All these modules help when building pic code for beginners and experts alike as it speeds up the production time of making PIC assembly code.

Example:
Lets say you want to make a program that lights up an LED on port A bit 0 then does a short delay before lighting up port A bit 1 and turning off port A bit 0
You would first set-up the PIC by selecting "change PIC" and selecting it to the one you want to use and seting the speed as well, then set-up the ports by going to the application designer window and clicking on the tab "Ports" you will then see 5 buttons appear in the window, pass your mouse over them and you will see what they do. The one that we want has a red arrow pointing to the right, now by double clicking this it will put the element module onto the picture of the pic you will see the same image as what was on the button appear on the picture of the pic with a tab sticking out from one side, click on the tab and then on click on a port pin (in our case RA0) you want to assign it to. Now repeat this for RA1, the 2 output ports will be given the labels Out0 and Out1. What we need now is a delay routine so go to the "timers" tab in the main application designer window and double clicking on the button with "Ms" and red Zeds written on it, this will put the delay element into the code. Once this is all done it's time to link all the parts up, do this by first right clicking on the PIC picture and then click on generate application, say OK to the next window that opens once this is done there will be a window open with PIC code written in it, that's not the file we want so go to "project" and "open all files" now go to the User.asm. Scroll down until you see following:

UserLoop:
goto Main ; Return to App Designer main loop

bsf Out0Port,Out0Bit ;turns Out0 (RA0) port on
movlw 150 ;load delay time into W register
call WaitWm ;call the delay routine
bcf Out0Port,Out0Bit ;turns Out0 (RA0) port off
bsf Out1Port,Out1Bit ;turns Out1 (RA1) port on

Once this is done generate the application. If you get any errors when you do this go back and check what you have done and compare it to this example.

When you have finished building you code you can run it direct through Micro chips MPLAB and then build the project it is then ready to be programmed in to your PIC MCU.

I think that WIS-ASM is a very useful and powerful program that helps you to build PIC assembly code as you can see by looking at ARM RAM and KTX1. It's got lots of interesting modules and gizmos to play with. Like most things in life it does takes a bit of getting used too, but once you've got into it you will find it speeds up all your code writing. I would however say that this is one program is not designed for advanced users of the PIC micro as it can limit scope of programming. Good for getting started though.

And remember if you do buy WIZ-ASM don't forget to mention Al's Robotics when ordering.