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What hardware components you must need: Before your first coding practice, and before your long steps to the PIC programming, you have to check if you have everything you need. You don't want to stumble at the start line and you don't want to see your PIC engine fizzle out. Basically, you need four things : (a) a PIC board - commercially available one or your own breadboard, (b) PIC burner - which downloads your code (or your bootloader code), (c) Bootloader code which you download to your PIC chip using the burner so that your application code can be downloaded without using the burner anymore, and lastly (d) a Windows program to actually download your code. Of course, you have to have PIC assembler, and you can get it free from Microchip web site. The exact name of the assembler (which comes with editor, assembler, and simulator, among other amenities) is MPLAB. Check my PIC Start-up page for the detailed explanation for (1)what minimum hardware you have to have for your PIC project, (2) how to select a proper 16F877 or 16F877A chip for the project, (3) where you get a bootloader, (4) where you can find a PIC burner to burn your PIC16F877 or 16F877A bootloader, (5) where you can download the Windows-based PIC downloader program (which downloads your own hex code to the bootloaded PIC chip), and (6)other important stuffs you have to check before ignite your PIC engine - a must read for all beginners. Chapter 4 of the book describes step by step for this coding environment with sample codes.