I just got a hold of a Mark III robot kit. I plan on putting it together soon. The reason i got it was to get started programming on a pic 16f877. I need to pick up some pic assembly and I figured the best way is to put together a bot that uses the microcontroller that I want to learn. I'm thinking of using the 16f876 to use in my tinybot project. It should be small enough and use low enough power. The reason I haven't done it yet is because there is really no good (free) ide besides the microchip assembler. And I really hate writing code in assembly, I'd much rather use C. I mean I can always get a hold of a C compiler but then debugging and simulating won't be too fun because I haven't seen any good C debuggers that are free. So I'm back to learning pic assembly as convoluted as it is. I just really hate dealing with old backwards compatible technology, you know with all this paging crap. I'd wish they would start selling the 18f series soon. I just saw that they released it on their website but I haven't found a place to buy them. Well Anyways, hopefully the mark III kit goes together smoothly and I'll be on my way to pic assembly world.