Proton BASIC Community

Dear Members i am moving the Proton picbasic compiler software from an old laptop to a new lap top with windows 11.
pls kinldy guide or advise me as to the best procedure to install ; re latest versions compatible with windows 11 and licence keys carry over from the old laptop .

thanks in advance

Salvu

Quote from: salvu on Feb 08, 2026, 05:32 PMDear Members i am moving the Proton picbasic compiler software from an old laptop to a new lap top with windows 11.

If you are using Proton, rather than Positron that is a very old version and I would strongly suggest you upgrade to Positron (see here) as there have been many changes and any help with code will likely contain commands that are not compatible with much older version of the compiler and so will not be of use to you.

If you meant Positron, then you should have no problems as long as you have your original installation file (Positron Compilers Setup for [your name here]), you should only need to run the exe file to install the compiler, then install any subsequent correction updates/upgrade files you have.

Good afternoon Stephen
thanks for your feedback . i have the file referred to myself and is positron not proton. will do as advised .
what in your opinion is the best environment to run the compiler .......Proton studio ? what is hen the latest version

Thanks again

Quote from: salvu on Feb 09, 2026, 03:01 PMwhat in your opinion is the best environment to run the compiler .......Proton studio ? what is hen the latest version

At one time I had switched to Positron Studio, being familiar with it due to doing a lot of testing during the original development, plus I like the Project manager feature, fuse configurator (now an out of date plug-in for the Mechanique IDE) and dark mode.
So that would be my general preference over the Mechanique IDE that come with Positron, although you may have to temporarily change the Processor ID to match any suitable ISIS board amongst the provided examples the ISIS simulation function of the Mechanique IDE is sometimes still useful for testing bits of code. I don't know for certain what the latest version of Positron Studio is but 2.1.0.4 is the latest I know of.

For some reason Positron Studio has not been working well for me (need to try the latest version), so I tend to flip flop between it and the Mechanique IDE at the moment.
I did try the FineLine but I was not quite as keen on it as Positron Studio and now Normnet is no longer with us it is not being supported/updated.
I don't know if the IDE for Visual Studio Code would work under Visual Studio as well, if it did I may try it, particularly if it also has its own version of a fuse configurator (I can hard code it but a configurator is more convenient).

Thanks Stephen . Really helpful.  As to the prototype boards I have the easy pic 5 bought years ago. I intend to start up again using picmicrocontrollers and want to invest in a new easily setup prototype . What is your advise . Thanks

If you want development boards, you might find my Amicus range useful. Les frequently posts code examples using these boards.

The Amicus 8 is an successor to Les's original Amicus 18 (no longer available) for various 8 bit parts and the Amicus 16A/B are new versions for various 16bit PIC devices.

More details here: https://easy-driver.co.uk/amicus/

John

Hi,
I can second what John is saying, I have an EasyPic 6 and rarely use it as it takes a lot of work to set up. I have 4 of Johns boards (8 & 16) which take Arduino shields so are very flexible.

Regards,
Bob 

Thanks Bob.

I've listed some of Les's excellent software examples for the Amicus 8 & 16 bit dev boards to help people get things going.

See the bottom of this page: https://easy-driver.co.uk/Amicus/

However I may have missed some, if so please let me know and I'll add them

John