When I first got interested in micros I originally wanted to goto school to be a programmer, but I had to take an elective and grumbling I took soldering. To my surprise my instructor introduced me to microcontrollers. It's been more than 15 years now and for my job I wanted to get back into them. I am so dissapointed though. I dusted off all my old eval boards, pics, and components yet I go to start diving in and EVERYTHING has changed. They used to give you IDE's for free all packages for compiling and sending to your micro. Now I see they want lots of money to do even something simple like compiling. Back in the day I started with parallax, I delved into atmels avr's and the last unit I recall using was the 16f684. I'd like to continue with the 16f684 but I can't even do it because my serial port complete book is obsolete. I have a pickit 1 board which if I goto microchip they want some absurd amount to get their program. Anyone have a site that I can restart from again? I'd like to use the 16f684 (just because I have a few laying around and I did like using it before) I'd like a free C-compiler to program the part in, and a way to send my program to the part. I just can't believe how popular these things have exploded but yet now they want you to pay for everything, they used to hand their programs like candy back then....