Features of PIC16F877A

I started with PIC16F877A demo board for my projects. let us now see the features of PIC16F877A, the following image shows my PIC16F877A demo board.

PIC16F877A demo board

Features of PIC16F877A

• High-performance RISC CPU
• Lead-free:RoHS-compliant
• Operating speed:20Mhz, 200ns instruction cycle
• Operating voltage:4.0-5.5volts
• Industrial temperature range(-40 to +85 degrees)
• 15 Interrupt sources
• 35 single word instructions
• All single-cycle instructions except for program branches

• Special Microcontroller Features
• Flash memory:14.3KB(8192 words)
• Data SRAM:368 bytes
• Data EEPROM:256 bytes
• Self-reprogrammable under software control
• In-circuit serial programming via two pins
• Watchdog timer with on-chip RC oscillator
• Programmable code protection
• Power-saving code protection
• Selectable oscillator options
• In-circuit debug via two pins

• Peripheral Features
• 33 I/O pins : 5 I/O ports
• Timer0:8-bit timer/counter with 8-bit prescaler
• Timer1:16-bit timer/counter with prescaler
• Timer2:8-bit timer/counter with 8-bit period register, prescaler and postscaler
• Two capture, compare, PWM modules
• Synchronous serial port with two modes
• USART/SCI with 9-bit address detection
• Parrallel slave port
• Brown-out detection circuitry for brown-out reset

• Analog Features
• 10-bit, 8-channel A/D converter
• Brown-out reset
• Analog comparable module

whats the difference between PIC16F877 and PIC16F877A ?

I got two answers for this question from my friends which i want to share with you
- The masking is different in both the microcontrollers

- While burning the code in PIC microcontroller their is an acknowledgement received for each code word written in PIC's memory. In case of PIC16F877 the code word is written one by one and hence their is an acknowledgement required for each code word written and hence the speed of writing is reduced. Whereas in case of PIC16F877A the code word is written in blocks and hence acknowledgement is required only for the block of code word and hence speed of writing is more when compared to that of PIC16F877A.