What is it with blank lines?

[aussiepoof]

The mnemonics are only obscure to you, because you're used to Z80 - it really depends on what you're used to - also the RISC instruction set probably confuses you when you are used to the overly complicated Z80 instruction set.

Hah! If only it were that easy... you see I've programmed in many assembly languages all with differing mnemonics since 1977. This includes the MIPS CPU just introduced to the PIC range as their 32-bit line which happens to be RISC

So no, RISC is no issue and nor is the Harvard architecture - the beauty of having studied computer science and electronic engineering more than 20 years ago I guess ;-) Or it could be that working for a company doing work in Unix kernels for Fujitsu supercomputers, SGI, Sun etc. helped... but I digress.

I would suggest (and often do) if you come from a Z80 background, the AVR is probably a better choice than a PIC - but if you're using C, then it doesn't really matter.

I actually much preferred the PDP-11 and Motorola 68000 mnemonics and their great degree of orthoginality.

Indeed it doesn't matter... and I have found the PIC 18F series to be very easy to use parts. I wouldn't give up the debugging abilities of the USB connections of the 18F2550/4550 series for anything!! It has radically increased my productivity in conjunction with C and the MPLAB/C18 combo.

YMMV,
P.