title: Lockheed P-2 Neptune

text: During the Falklands War in 1982, the last two airframes in service (2-P-111 and 2-P-112) carried out reconnaissance missions over the South Atlantic and on 4 May, after detecting a group of British warships, helped to direct an attack by two Dassault Super Étendards that resulted in the sinking of the British destroyer . The lack of spare parts, caused by the US having enacted an arms embargo in 1977 due to the "Dirty War", led to the type being retired before the end of the war; Argentine Air Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules took over the task of searching for targets for strike aircraft.


title: Lockheed P-2 Neptune

text: The Royal Canadian Air Force's Air Command replaced their aging Avro Lancaster maritime aircraft beginning in 1955 with P2V-7 Neptunes in the anti-submarine, anti-shipping, and maritime reconnaissance roles, as a stopgap pending deliveries of the Canadair CP-107 Argus, which began in 1960. Canadian Neptunes were delivered without the underwing Westinghouse J34 jet engine pods, which were retrofitted in 1959. Armament included two torpedoes, mines, depth charges, bombs carried internally plus unguided rockets mounted under the wings. Twenty five Neptunes served with 404, 405 and 407 squadrons until 1960. Upon unification of the Canadian Forces in 1968, the Neptune was re-designated the CP122 and was officially retired two years later.


title: Lockheed P-2 Neptune

text: With the founding of NATO in 1949 and the resulting additional maritime commitments it entailed for Britain, The Royal Air Force Coastal Command operated 52 P2V-5s, designated Neptune MR.1, as a stop-gap modern maritime patrol aircraft until sufficient numbers of the Avro Shackleton could enter service. The Neptunes were used from between 1952 and March 1957, being used for airborne early warning experiments as well as for maritime patrol.


title: Lockheed P-2 Neptune

text: In Australia, the Netherlands, and the US Navy, its tasks were taken over by the larger and more capable P-3 Orion, and by the 1970s, it was in use only by patrol squadrons in the US Naval Reserve and the Dutch Navy. The 320 Squadron of the Royal Dutch Navy retired its last seven Neptune’s in March 1982 as they were being replaced by the Lockheed Orion. The US Naval Reserve retired its last Neptunes in 1978, those aircraft also having been replaced by the P-3 Orion. By the 1980s, the Neptune had fallen out of military use in most purchasing nations, replaced by newer aircraft.


title: Lockheed P-2 Neptune

text: The Netherlands received its first Neptunes in 1953–54, when it acquired 12 P2V-5s. These remained in service until 1960, when they were transferred to Portugal. The P2V-5s were initially not replaced, with the anti-submarine aircraft requirement being met by carrier-borne Grumman S-2 Trackers. A new, urgent, requirement for maritime patrol aircraft soon developed, for service over Dutch New Guinea, and 15 new P2V-7s were purchased, entering service from September 1961. While initially employed on reconnaissance and patrol duties, as Indonesian infiltration attempts against New Guinea increased, the Neptunes added bombing and strafing operations to their patrol duties. On 17 May 1962, a Netherlands Navy Neptune shot down an Indonesian C-47 transport. A truce ended the conflict in September 1962, with Dutch New Guinea passing to UN control before becoming part of Indonesia, and the P2V-7s returned to Europe. The aircraft were upgraded to SP-2H standard soon after returning to the Netherlands, and remained in service until March 1982, when they were replaced by Lockheed Orions.


title: Lockheed P-2 Neptune

text: In Japan, the Neptune was license-built from 1966 by Kawasaki as the P-2J, with the piston engines replaced by IHI-built T64 turboprops. Kawasaki continued their manufacture much later than Lockheed did; the P-2J remained in service until 1984.


title: Lockheed P-2 Neptune

text: P-2/P2Vs have been employed in aerial firefighting roles by operators such as Minden Air Corp and Neptune Aviation Services. The fire fighters can carry of retardant and have a service life of 15,000 hours. Neptune Aviation Services proposes to replace them with British Aerospace 146 aircraft, which have an estimated service life of 80,000 hours and carry upwards of of retardant.


title: Lockheed P-2 Neptune

text: The third production P2V-1 was chosen for a record-setting mission, ostensibly to test crew endurance and long-range navigation but also for publicity purposes: to display the capabilities of the US Navy's latest patrol bomber, and to surpass the standing record set by a Japanese Tachikawa Ki-77. Its nickname was "The Turtle", which was painted on the aircraft's nose (along with a cartoon of a turtle smoking a pipe pedaling a device attached to a propeller). However, in press releases immediately before the flight, the US Navy referred to it as "The Truculent Turtle".


title: Lockheed P-2 Neptune

text: Loaded with fuel in extra tanks fitted in practically every spare space in the aircraft, "The Turtle" set out from Perth, Australia to the United States. With a crew of four (and a nine-month-old gray kangaroo, a gift from Australia for the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.) the aircraft set off on 9 September 1946, with a RATO (rocket-assisted takeoff). days (55h, 18m) later, "The Turtle" touched down in Columbus, Ohio after . It was the longest un-refueled flight yet beating the unofficial record set by the Japanese Tachikawa Ki-77. This would stand as the absolute unrefueled distance record until 1962 when it was beaten by a USAF Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, and would remain as a piston-engined record until 1986 when the Rutan Voyager broke it circumnavigating the globe. "The Turtle" is preserved at the National Museum of Naval Aviation at NAS Pensacola.


title: Lockheed P-2 Neptune

text: Lockheed produced seven main variants of the P2V. In addition, Kawasaki built the turboprop-powered P-2J in Japan.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Orleans is an American pop rock band best known for its hits "Dance with Me" (No. 6 in 1975); "Still the One" (No. 5 in 1976), from the album "Waking and Dreaming"; and "Love Takes Time" (No. 11 in 1979). The group's name evolved from the music it was playing at the time of their formation, which was inspired by Louisiana artists such as Allen Toussaint and the Neville Brothers. Orleans was formed in Woodstock, New York in January 1972 by vocalist/guitarist/songwriter John Hall, vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist/bassist/songwriter Larry Hoppen and drummer/keyboardist/songwriter Wells Kelly. In October of that year, the group expanded to include Larry's younger brother, Lance, on bass. Drummer Jerry Marotta joined in 1976, completing the quintet. (Hall was later elected to the United States House of Representatives.)


title: Orleans (band)

text: Drummer Wells Kelly (son of Cornell University's Dean of Architecture, Burnham Kelly) first met John Hall, an in-demand session player and member of the group Kangaroo, in the late 1960s when he played with him in a group called Thunderfrog and later played on John's first solo album, "Action", released in 1970.


title: Orleans (band)

text: In 1969 Wells joined the first incarnation of King Harvest, who would have a hit four years later, in 1973, with the song "Dancing in the Moonlight"; a song written by Wells' brother, Sherman Kelly, and first recorded by Boffalongo, an Ithaca-based group Wells joined in 1970 after leaving King Harvest.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Hall and his wife, Johanna, had just gained some fame when their song "Half Moon" appeared on Janis Joplin's posthumous album "Pearl". Hall, who had recorded and toured with Taj Mahal and Seals and Crofts, decided to relocate from New York City to Woodstock, New York, at the request of producer/pianist John Simon, to be close to Bearsville Studios and the musical scene there.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Larry Hoppen, who grew up in Bay Shore, Long Island, relocated to Ithaca, New York to attend college in the late 60s. He was a founding member of Boffalongo and had two albums released by United Artists. Sherman Kelly and "Dancin' in the Moonlight" appeared on the 2nd album. Wells Kelly had joined the band after that.


title: Orleans (band)

text: After a swing through Europe playing guitar behind Karen Dalton on a Santana tour, Hall decided to start his own band in Woodstock. After months of playing the Cafe Expresso with different rhythm sections, Hall called his old friend Wells Kelly in Ithaca in December 1971 and asked him to join his group. Multi-instrumentalist Kelly accepted the offer on the condition that he play piano. For a brief time, the group consisted of Hall on guitar, Roy Markowitz on drums, Bill Gelber on bass and Kelly on electric piano. When Markowitz and Gelber left the band, Wells told John about his former bandmate from the Ithaca-based Boffalongo. Hall encouraged Kelly to call Larry Hoppen, who accepted the invitation to join the new group, christened "Orleans" by Wells in late January 1972. For months they would play as a trio, often switching instruments throughout the show.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Larry's 18-year-old brother, Lance Hoppen, was brought into Orleans around Halloween 1972 to play bass, freeing up Larry to play more guitar and keyboards.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Orleans found its core audience touring the clubs and college circuit of the Northeastern United States, crossing paths with other up-and-comers such as Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits and Hall & Oates. "Rolling Stone" magazine called Orleans "the best unrecorded band in America". Showcase performances in New York gave rise to a recording contract with ABC Dunhill Records and the release of the eponymous debut album in the fall of 1973, which had been recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama with producers Roger Hawkins and Barry Beckett at the helm.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Reviewing "Orleans" in "" (1981), Robert Christgau said, "In case you're interested, this band is mucho hot among Eastern rock cognoscenti (read, know-it-alls). Very pleasant, too, although John Hall doesn't sing as tasty as he plays. The only impressive song is 'Half Moon.' Anything Janis Joplin used to sing is impressive, so that may not mean much."


title: Orleans (band)

text: The group's second record, "Orleans II", recorded at Bearsville Studios, was originally released in Europe in 1974 but ABC declined to release it in the US since management felt there were "no hit singles" on the album (despite the fact that it contained the first-version recordings of both "Let There Be Music" and "Dance With Me") and dropped the group from the label. After the band's later successes, "Orleans II" was finally put out in America in 1978, combined with the first album, as a double LP called "Before the Dance". It was also released as a CD in Japan in the 1990s under its originally slated title "Dance With Me".


title: Orleans (band)

text: However, it was not until Orleans was heard at Max's Kansas City, signed and produced, by Chuck Plotkin, then head of A&R for Asylum Records, that the band scored its first "Billboard" Hot 100 charting single "Let There Be Music" (No. 55), taken from their third album, "Let There Be Music", released in March 1975.


title: Orleans (band)

text: The follow-up single, "Dance With Me" (reshaped and re-recorded from "Orleans II" with Plotkin at the helm), brought Orleans to No. 6 on the pop charts and into the mainstream of American pop music. Atypical of the high-energy, earthy, R&B and Rock n' Roll mix of styles they had been previously identified with, "Dance With Me" cast the band in a more "soft-rock" light and landed them a tour with Melissa Manchester.


title: Orleans (band)

text: While recording their next album, "Waking and Dreaming", in early 1976, the group was joined by second drummer Jerry Marotta, freeing Wells Kelly up to sing more and play keyboards.


title: Orleans (band)

text: "Still the One" (released in July 1976), from "Waking and Dreaming", cemented Orleans' relationship with the American public. While the single was climbing the charts to peak eventually at No. 5, the band did a major cross-country ten-week tour with label-mate Jackson Browne, ending in November 1976.


title: Orleans (band)

text: In January 1977 the single was chosen as the theme song for the ABC television network (the parent of ABC Records) and has since been used for an endless number of commercials and movie soundtracks.


title: Orleans (band)

text: The follow-up, "Reach", with John Hall on lead, peaked at No. 51 in March 1977. Around then, however, internal stresses and disagreements over material and musical direction prompted guitarist/songwriter Hall to announce his intention to leave the band in search of a solo career, which he did in June 1977 after touring commitments were satisfied. Marotta departed not long afterwards to join Hall and Oates and eventually moved on to Peter Gabriel's band.


title: Orleans (band)

text: After several months of mulling things over and working with other musicians (Lance and Larry joined Jerry Marotta in the backing band for Garland Jeffreys while Kelly worked with the Beach Boys), the Hoppen brothers and Kelly decided to continue on in late 1977, bringing in new members Robert Martin (vocals, keyboards, sax, horns) and Connecticut musician Bob Leinbach (vocals, keyboards, trombone), who'd played with Larry Hoppen and the Kellys in Boffalongo during the Ithaca years and had completed a stint with the group the Fabulous Rhinestones. The new lineup signed a contract with the Infinity Records label and their debut there, "Forever" (April 1979), produced the No. 11 hit "Love Takes Time". Collectively, the three Hot 100 top 20 Orleans hits have been aired over 10 million times.


title: Orleans (band)

text: In 1980 Infinity went bankrupt after an album with performances by Pope John Paul II (who was on a tour of the US in the fall of '79) failed to sell. Infinity was absorbed into MCA Records, who failed to promote their follow-up album, simply titled "Orleans". This last, recorded in Woodstock, featured only the Hoppens and Wells Kelly as Orleans proper, since the others had left earlier in the year. Nonetheless, the album featured guest appearances from all past members, including John Hall, who was in the process of forming the John Hall Band with Leinbach as a member. "Orleans" was produced by Englishman Robin Lumley, mixed at Trident Studios in London and featured Lumley's friend, Phil Collins, contributing backing vocals to one track.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Just after recording that 1980 release, the group added Dennis "Fly" Amero (guitars, vocals) to replace Leinbach. The live lineup still featured Robert (R.A.) Martin and the band completed a tour of amusement parks that summer, only to learn that their accountant had misappropriated funds, leaving them in debt. Martin left, "Fly" stayed, Larry and Lance recruited their younger brother, Lane Hoppen, to play keyboards and drummer Charlie Shew (at that time going under the pseudonym Eric Charles) to play alongside Wells Kelly. Charlie then replaced Wells when he left by early 1981 to relocate to NYC.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Orleans then signed with the fledgling Radio Records and recorded their next album, "One of a Kind", in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the summer of '82. The album (released in September 1982) included brand new band member Michael Mugrage, replacing "Fly" Amero on guitar at the request of the album's producers, Don Silver and Ben Wisch. Jerry Marotta briefly rejoined the band to play on the album but was soon replaced by drummer Nicholas Parker after its release. But Radio Records, likewise, went bankrupt just as "One of a Kind" was hitting the record store shelves.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Now without a record label, Orleans struggled in the early 1980s, playing mostly small clubs in the Northeast. At this same time, Larry and Lance formed a side group, Mood Ring, with Bob Leinbach, Nicholas Parker, singer/songwriter Robbie Dupree (of "Steal Away" fame) and various other Woodstockers who drifted in and out to play for fun, mostly at parties and clubs. Mood Ring played some club dates in 1984 billed as Robbie Dupree and Orleans (In the late 2000s, Mood Ring reconvened to do occasional concert dates).


title: Orleans (band)

text: After a couple of draining years touring the Northeast club circuit, during a tough two-week stint in Bermuda in September 1984, Larry lost his voice just one day into the gig due to a combination of air-conditioning and high humidity. After this, he returned to his home in Woodstock and decided to take some time off to allow his voice to heal. At that low point, both Larry and Lance felt that was the likely end of Orleans.


title: Orleans (band)

text: In the meantime, Kelly went on to join Steve Forbert's Flying Squirrels in 1981 and did a few shows in the Central New York area with Mick Ronson. He also played with Clarence Clemons and the Red Bank Rockers before joining Meat Loaf's Neverland Express in 1983. On October 29, 1984, Wells died while on tour in England with Meat Loaf. After a night of partying, his body was found on the front stairs of a London flat at which he was staying. According to pathologist Dr. Ian West, a post mortem examination revealed "high levels of morphine and cocaine" in Kelly's body. "Death came from the drummer inhaling his own vomit 'induced by snorting a mixture of heroin and cocaine'."


title: Orleans (band)

text: Wells Kelly's untimely death was the catalyst for a reunion of Hall and the Hoppen brothers. John Hall and Bob Leinbach joined Larry in Ithaca, NY to play at a memorial for Wells (Lance was unable to make the wake due to another commitment). Having not played together for seven years, Larry and John rediscovered the magic of the combination.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Then in 1985, through the Halls' connections in Nashville, the reunited lineup of John Hall, Larry Hoppen, Lance Hoppen and Bob Leinbach cut the album "Grown Up Children" (June 1986), with guest appearances from heavyweights like Chet Atkins, Ricky Skaggs, Steve Wariner and Bela Fleck, under the direction of Nashville producer/MCA label chief Tony Brown. Though this album had some playing by John and Larry, most of the instrumental tracks were played by session players, including guitarist Richard Bennett, drummer Larrie London and bassist David Hungate, with the Orleans members providing mostly vocals.


title: Orleans (band)

text: During their Nashville period, the band added bassist Glen Worf and drummer Paul Cook (who was eventually replaced by Tommy Wells) for concert dates, as Lance switched to acoustic guitar.


title: Orleans (band)

text: By late 1987, John and Larry began to realize that, while Nashville was a great place for them as songwriters, it was not so accommodating to Orleans' career as a band. For the next 2+ years, Orleans was in a fairly dormant state, again basing their activities back in Woodstock, NY. In early 1989, Lance was offered an opportunity to move to Nashville to work with old friends Kathie Baillie and Michael Bonagura as part of the then-hit RCA act, Baillie & the Boys. For a while, he was no longer available for all Orleans' gigs, so bassist Jim Curtin became Lance's sub, as needed, between 1989 and 1994. Meanwhile, New York native Peter O'Brien had been brought in on drums.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Orleans slowly re-established their presence in the Northeast over the next couple of years. In 1990 Robbie Dupree approached them to make a live album for their growing fan base in Japan. Two shows at Woodstock's Bearsville Theater were recorded on October 6 and 7, 1990, as John, Larry and Lance were joined by Bob Leinbach, Paul Branin (sax, guitar) and special guests: Rob Leon, John Sebastian, Jonell Mosser and Lane Hoppen.


title: Orleans (band)

text: The double "Orleans Live" CD set, culled from the two Bearsville Theater shows, came out in Japan in February 1991, followed in April by their first trip to perform in Japan (with a lineup of John, Larry, Lance, Leinbach, O'Brien and Paul Branin). 1993 saw the American release of "Orleans Live: Volume 1", a single disc CD version and the first release on the band's own Major Records label. "Live Volume 2", featuring the rest of the show, was soon to follow.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Still without a "traditional" label in the US, Orleans recorded a new album, "Analog Men", for the Japanese label Pioneer. It came out there in 1994 and was followed by a return to Japan for more shows.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Later that year, Orleans played at Woodstock 94, which was practically in their backyard, in Saugerties, New York. Bob Leinbach once again rejoined the group for this show and continued to make occasional guest appearances with them throughout the 90s.


title: Orleans (band)

text: The following year found them touring as an acoustic trio (John, Larry and Lance). While most of the venues were small listening clubs, the real highlight of '95 was being the opening act on the "Can't Stop Rockin" tour with Fleetwood Mac, REO Speedwagon and Pat Benatar.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Yet another new album, "Ride", was recorded at John's Saugerties studio and released through an independent label, Dinosaur Entertainment, out of New Orleans. "Ride" emerged in the summer of 1996 and included just a couple of reworkings of the best and still unheard-in-the-US tunes from "Analog Men". The single "I Am on Your Side" even began to make its way up the charts, but the label proved inexperienced and it folded shortly afterward, killing the song's chances for more radio play.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Orleans continued on but, in late 1997, decided to take another break. John was spending more and more time writing in Nashville. Lance was touring with various Nashville-based artists and Larry, who'd remarried and started a family, relocated to Florida in 2000 and formed his own Larry Hoppen Band. Since 1997, Larry had also been involved with Voices of Classic Rock, who in 2003 became known as RPM (Rock & Pop Masters) This was a "supergroup" of lead singers of popular 70s/80s groups (Toto, Survivor, Santana, Rainbow, etc.), backed by a single world-class touring band.


title: Orleans (band)

text: In the summer of 2001, nearly four years after their last gig, Orleans (John Hall, Larry, Lance, Peter O'Brien and Bob Leinbach) reunited on Labor Day weekend to play the Opus 40 Amphitheatre in Saugerties. After this, the band decided to remain together and continue on. For some shows, the band included Peter and Bob. For others, Charlie Morgan (ex-Elton John) became the drummer and Lane Hoppen rejoined the band on keyboards. By 2005, Charlie and Lane had become permanent in their positions.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Orleans continued to play live and record. A studio album, "Dancin' in the Moonlight", was recorded in May and June 2004 at Charlie Morgan's Thynne Man Studios and first released in October 2005 on the CD Baby label. After this, the band's lineup was Larry, Lance and Lane Hoppen, Charlie Morgan and the returning Dennis "Fly" Amero (who replaced John Hall as he began his campaign for Congress in 2006) on guitar.


title: Orleans (band)

text: In 2007 Orleans released a live DVD/CD, "We're Still Havin' Fun", recorded in August 2006 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which included both John Hall and "Fly" Amero, as well as the three Hoppen Brothers and drummer Charlie Morgan. Also appearing at this show were special guests: percussionist Manuel Quintana and Charles DeChant (from Hall & Oates) on sax.


title: Orleans (band)

text: During his 2006 bid for a US Congressional seat, Hall appeared with the group on only a few occasions. On November 7, 2006, Hall was elected as a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives from the state of New York. He was reelected in 2008. During the 2010 midterm elections, a political ad parody supporting John Hall's opponent, Nan Hayworth, promoted the fictitious organization "Young Voters for an Orleans Reunion Tour" as a means of voting Hall from Congress. Hayworth defeated Hall in the election. He had served four years (two terms) representing District 19 in the Hudson Valley, between New York City and Albany, New York.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Orleans continued to write, record, and perform. In 2010 there were repeat performances in both Washington, DC (in support of DCCC), and in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (fundraising for the Nana Baby Home, the orphanage there).


title: Orleans (band)

text: On July 24, 2012, founding band member Larry Hoppen took his own life. Shows planned for the rest of the year were suddenly in jeopardy. But Lance quickly announced that, although the band was in deep mourning for Larry, they had decided to finish the year's remaining dates (about 8) as best they could. It was at this point that John Hall returned to the live lineup and other alumni joined them on various shows. The first of those was 30 days later, in Deadwood, South Dakota, on August 24, 2012. The group would then play a free show at SteelStacks on September 2 in memoriam and continued on from there. On September 16, 2012, a memorial gathering of friends and family was held at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock. Bob Leinbach, among the performers, sang "Forever", a song he had written with Larry about undying friendship.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Orleans carried on to November 11, 2012, with a lineup consisting of John Hall, Dennis "Fly" Amero, Charlie Morgan, and Lance and Lane Hoppen, ending the year with a memorial show at Mercy Lounge in Nashville, joined by many artist supporters including Jimi Jamison, John Ford Coley, Henry Paul, Jonell Mosser, Kathie Baillie & Michael Bonagura, Pete Huttlinger and Bill Lloyd. Again, it seemed to Lance that this would be the natural ending of Orleans' 40-year run. But that was not to be.


title: Orleans (band)

text: In the summer of 2013, supported by new manager Len Fico, the band appeared as part of the "Sail Rock Tour", not only playing a set of their own hits, but providing back up for headliner Christopher Cross and contemporaries Firefall, Gary Wright, John Ford Coley, Robbie Dupree, Player and Al Stewart. That year also saw the release of "The Last Band Standing" DVD and the double-disc compilation CD, "No More Than You Can Handle: A 40 Year Musical Journey", featuring several previously unreleased recordings. Among them is the title cut, which was the last in which Larry participated as co-writer, singer and player.


title: Orleans (band)

text: In the following years, Orleans continued to tour the US. Charlie Morgan departed in April 2018 and was replaced by drummer Brady Spencer.


title: Orleans (band)

text: In July 2019 John Hall announced his retirement from performing. Daniel "Chip" Martin, a Nashville musician friend of Lance and Brady, then joined Orleans on guitar and vocals. But John's "retirement" turned out to be a temporary sabbatical. In March 2020 John was just about to return to touring when everything came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Orleans (band)

text: During the summer of 2021, Orleans resumed in person appearances and in August of that year, vocalist/guitarist Tom Lane came to fill in for an ill "Fly" Amero, then ended up taking his place permanently.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Most recently the band has released an "in isolation" video performance of "No More Than You Can Handle" in memory of Larry Hoppen and as an aid for those who are struggling with the challenges of these most difficult of times.


title: Orleans (band)

text: Starting in March 2022, the band toured as a quartet of Lance, Lane, Brady Spencer and Tom Lane after John Hall retired from the road once again. But shortly afterwards, they were a quintet once more when "Fly" Amero rejoined them again.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie is a 1990 American comedy horror anthology film directed by John Harrison, and based on the anthology television series "Tales from the Darkside". The film depicts a kidnapped paperboy who tells three stories of horror to the suburban witch who is preparing to eat him.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: Betty, an affluent suburban housewife and modern-day witch, plans a dinner party for her fellow witches. The main dish is to be Timmy, a young boy whom she has captured and chained up in her pantry. To stall her from stuffing and roasting him, the boy tells her three horror stories from a book she gave him, titled <nowiki>"Tales from the Darkside"</nowiki>.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: A graduate student, Edward Bellingham, has been cheated by two classmates, Susan, and Lee, who framed him for theft to ruin his chances of winning a scholarship for which they were competing. As revenge, Bellingham reanimates a mummy and uses it to murder them both. Susan's brother Andy kidnaps Bellingham, forces him to summon the mummy, then destroys it and burns its remains and what he believes to be the reanimation parchment. He considers killing Bellingham, but in the end cannot bring himself to commit real murder. However, Bellingham brings Susan and Lee back from the dead (having switched the reanimation parchment with a similar one) and dispatches them to Andy's dorm, where they greet the terrified Andy by saying that Bellingham sends his regards.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: Drogan, a wealthy old man who uses a wheelchair, brings in a hitman named Halston for a bizarre hire: kill a black cat, which Drogan believes is murderously evil. Drogan explains that there were three other occupants of his house before the cat arrived: his sister, Amanda, her friend Carolyn, and the family's butler, Richard Gage. Drogan claims that one by one, the cat killed the other three, and that he is next. Drogan's pharmaceutical company killed 5,000 cats while testing a new drug, and he is convinced that this black cat is here to exact cosmic revenge.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: Halston does not believe the story, but is more than willing to eliminate the cat since Drogan is offering $100,000. But when Drogan returns to the house to see if the deed is done, he finds that the cat has killed Halston by climbing down his throat. The cat emerges from the hitman's corpse and jumps at Drogan, giving him a fatal heart attack.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: Preston is a struggling artist. He lives in a studio with a skylight, through which a large stone gargoyle on the neighboring building, peers down. Preston's agent calls, asking to meet with him at a bar a few blocks away. The agent tells Preston that his artwork is unpopular and not selling. Dejected, Preston drinks heavily and at the end of the night, the bar owner who is a friend of his, offers to walk him home.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: Along the way, Preston stops to relieve himself in a back alley, when his friend sees and shoots at a gargoyle monster. The creature attacks, severing his hand and then decapitating him. Terrified, Preston tries to run away, but the creature corners him and speaks, agreeing to spare his life if he swears never to reveal what he has seen. The monster scratches Preston's chest, saying "Cross your heart?", then vanishes.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: Preston runs into another alley where he bumps into a lone woman named Carola. She claims to have become lost while going to meet friends and was searching for a taxi. Preston convinces her to call a taxi from his apartment, where Carola cleans the gargoyle-inflicted wound on his chest, and they have sex with each other.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: Preston's life soon improves, and his struggling art career becomes wildly successful, mostly thanks to Carola's connections. They eventually marry and have two children. Preston is still tormented by memories of the gargoyle though, and his vow of silence weighs heavily on him. On the tenth anniversary of him first meeting Carola, Preston breaks down and tells her about the monster. Carola appears uncomfortable by his revelation and then emits a heartbroken wail, "You promised you'd never tell!", revealing herself as the creature that killed his friend.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: With Preston's vow broken, Carola can no longer remain human and begins transforming back into a gargoyle. Their children are screaming in the bedroom as they also transform into gargoyles. Carola, now fully transformed, wraps her wings around Preston and the couple proclaim their love for each other, but with the vow broken, Carola is still reluctantly forced to kill him by biting his neck, before flying away with her gargoyle children. The final scene shows the three gargoyles now turned to stone and sitting upon the building ledge, staring down at the city with sorrowful expressions.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: Betty remarks that Timmy saved the best story ("Lover's Vow") for last, but he says that the next one is best, and has a happy ending. She replies that it is too late as she has to start cooking him, and that none of the stories in the book have happy endings. As Betty advances on Timmy, he narrates his own actions: throwing some marbles on the floor, causing her to slip and fall on her butcher's block and impaling her on her own tools. Timmy releases himself and pushes her into her own oven. The film ends with Timmy helping himself to a cookie and breaking the fourth wall by saying "Don't you just love happy endings?"


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: The first segment is an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1892 short story, "Lot No. 249"; written by Michael McDowell.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: The second segment is an adaptation of Stephen King's 1977 short story "The Cat from Hell"; written by George A. Romero


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: The third and final segment is an adaptation of the legend of the Yuki-onna from Lafcadio Hearn's 1904 book ""; written by Michael McDowell.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: "Cat from Hell" was originally going to appear in "Creepshow 2", but was scrapped due to budgetary reasons.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie" was a modest box office success for Paramount. The film was released May 4, 1990 in the United States, opening in third place that weekend. It grossed a total of $16,324,573 domestically.


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: The film was given a rating of 45% on the ratings aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 22 reviews, while receiving an overall grade of "C" at Box Office Mojo. "Los Angeles Times" writer Michael Wilmington criticized Harrison's directing choices ("too much ritzy film noir styling and self-conscious comic book frames") but said "there’s more brain than usual beneath the blood and guts". "The Washington Post" panned the film, calling it a "lame effort".


title: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

text: Laurel Productions initially announced a sequel to the film in October 1990. A screenplay was written by the first film's screenwriters Michael McDowell and George Romero, along with Gahan Wilson. Segments planned included an adaptation of Robert Bloch's "Almost Human", alongside adaptations of Stephen King's short stories "Pinfall" (originally planned for "Creepshow 2") and "Rainy Season". This sequel, however, never came to fruition.


title: Carleton College

text: Carleton College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. Founded in 1866, it had 2,105 undergraduate students and 269 faculty members in fall 2016. The 200-acre main campus is between Northfield and the 800-acre Cowling Arboretum, which became part of the campus in the 1920s.


title: Carleton College

text: Admissions is highly selective with an acceptance rate of 16.5% in 2022, and Carleton is annually ranked near the top in most rankings of liberal arts schools. Carleton is particularly renowned for its undergraduate teaching, having been ranked #1 in Undergraduate Teaching by U.S. News & World Report for over a decade.


title: Carleton College

text: Students can choose courses from 33 major programs and 31 minor programs and have the option to design their own major. Carleton's varsity sports compete at the NCAA Division III level in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Carleton is also known for its Division 1 Ultimate Frisbee teams, which have won multiple national championships.


title: Carleton College

text: Among liberal arts colleges, Carleton is one of the highest sources of undergraduate students pursuing doctorates per one hundred students, and from 2000 through 2016, students and alumni of the college have included 122 National Science Foundation Graduate Fellows, 112 Fulbright Scholars, 22 Watson Fellows, 20 NCAA Postgraduate Scholars, 13 Goldwater Scholars, and 2 Rhodes Scholars.


title: Carleton College

text: The school was founded in 1866, when the Minnesota Conference of Congregational Churches unanimously accepted a resolution to locate a college in Northfield. Two Northfield businessmen, Charles Augustus Wheaton and Charles Moorehouse Goodsell, each donated of land for the first campus. The first students enrolled at the preparatory unit of Northfield College in the fall of 1867. In 1870, the first college president, James Strong, traveled to the East Coast to raise funds for the college. On his way from visiting a potential donor, William Carleton of Charlestown, Massachusetts, Strong was badly injured in a collision between his carriage and a train. Impressed by Strong's survival of the accident, Carleton donated $50,000 to the fledgling institution in 1871. As a result, the Board of Trustees renamed the school in his honor.


title: Carleton College

text: The college graduated its first college class in 1874, James J. Dow and Myra A. Brown, who married each other later that year.


title: Carleton College

text: On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger Gang, led by outlaw Jesse James, tried to rob the First National Bank of Northfield. Joseph Lee Heywood, Carleton's Treasurer, was acting cashier at the bank that day. He was shot and killed for refusing to open the safe. Carleton later named a library fund after Heywood. The Heywood Society is the name for a group of donors who have named Carleton in their wills.


title: Carleton College

text: In its early years under the presidency of James Strong, Carleton reflected the theological conservatism of its Minnesota Congregational founders. In 1903, modern religious influences were introduced by William Sallmon, a Yale Divinity School graduate, who was hired as college president. Sallmon was opposed by conservative faculty members and alumni, and left the presidency by 1908. After Sallmon left, the trustees hired Donald J. Cowling, another theologically liberal Yale Divinity School graduate, as his successor. In 1916, under Cowling's leadership, Carleton began an official affiliation with the Minnesota Baptist Convention. It lasted until 1928, when the Baptists severed the relationship as a result of fundamentalist opposition to Carleton's liberalism, including the college's support for teaching evolution. Non-denominational for a number of years, in 1964 Carleton abolished its requirement for weekly attendance at some religious or spiritual meeting.


title: Carleton College

text: In 1927, students founded the first student-run pub in the nation, The Cave. Located in the basement of Evans Hall, it continues to host live music shows and other events several times each week.


title: Carleton College

text: In 1942, Carleton purchased land in Stanton, about east of campus, to use for flight training. During World War II, several classes of male students went through air basic training at the college. Since being sold by the college in 1944, the Stanton Airfield has been operated for commercial use. The world premiere production of the English translation of Bertolt Brecht's play, "The Caucasian Chalk Circle", was performed in 1948 at Carleton's Little Nourse Theater.


title: Carleton College

text: In 1963 the Reformed Druids of North America was founded by students at Carleton, initially as a means to be excused from attendance of then-mandatory weekly chapel service. Within a few years, the group evolved to engage in legitimate spiritual exploration. Its legacy remains in campus location names such as the Stone Circle (commonly called "the Druid Circle") and the Hill of the Three Oaks. Meetings continue to be held in the Carleton College Cowling Arboretum.


title: Carleton College

text: President Bill Clinton gave the last commencement address of his administration at Carleton, on June 10, 2000, marking the first presidential visit to the college.


title: Carleton College

text: Carleton is a small, liberal arts college offering 34 different majors and 39 minors, and is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. Students also have the option to design their own major. There are ten languages offered: Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The academic calendar follows a trimester system where students usually take three classes per 10-week term.


title: Carleton College

text: Degree students are required to take an Argument & Inquiry Seminar in their first year, a writing-rich course, three quantitative reasoning encounters (courses in which students work with quantitative data and arguments), language, international studies, intercultural domestic studies, humanistic inquiry, literary/artistic analysis, arts practice, science, formal or statistical reasoning, social inquiry, and physical education.


title: Carleton College

text: The average class sizes at Carleton is 16 students. The most popular areas of study are biology, political science and international relations, economics, chemistry, psychology, mathematics, and computer science. Carleton is one of the few liberal arts colleges to run on the trimester system.


title: Carleton College

text: Studying abroad is common at Carleton: 76% of the senior class of 2018 studied abroad at least once over their four years. Carleton offers a number of its own programs each year, which are led by Carleton faculty and available only to Carleton students. In 2017–2018, 17 such programs were offered. Although many students opt to go on a Carleton-specific program, because full financial aid and academic credits can transfer to other programs, many students choose to study with other schools or organizations.


title: Carleton College

text: Admission to Carleton has been categorized as "most selective" by "U.S. News & World Report". The class of 2025 admittance rate was 17.5% of all applicants, making Carleton the most selective college in Minnesota.


title: Carleton College

text: In 2016, 219 of the 647 early decision applicants were accepted (33.8%) and 1,248 of the 5,838 regular decision applicants were accepted (21.4%). A spot on the waitlist was offered to 1,366 applicants, of whom 533 accepted and 2 were ultimately admitted. Enrolling freshmen numbered 567, making the yield rate (the percentage of accepted students who enroll) 38.7%. Of the 197 who applied for transfer admission, none were admitted, which is unusual.


title: Carleton College

text: Carleton has a strong history of enrolling students who are in the National Merit Scholarship Program, often enrolling more than any other liberal arts college in the nation. Usually around 16% of the incoming class, the Class of 2021 included 51 National Merit Scholars.


title: Carleton College

text: Carleton has been in the top 10 since 1997 in the "U.S. News & World Report" rankings. For 2020, it ranks tied for 7th overall, and 1st for "Best Undergraduate Teaching", 9th for "Most Innovative" and 32nd for "Best Value". In 2019, the "Washington Monthly" ratings — using criteria of social mobility, research, and service — ranked Carleton the 24th best college in the liberal arts college category. In the 2019 "Forbes" ranking of 650 American colleges, which combines liberal arts colleges, service academies and national research universities, Carleton is ranked 52nd.


title: Carleton College

text: "Kiplinger's Personal Finance" places Carleton 13th in its 2019 ranking of the 149 best value liberal arts colleges in the United States. Carleton was ranked 5th in the 2015 Brookings Institution list of "Four-Year or Higher Colleges With the Highest Value-Added With Respect to Mid-Career Earnings", with Carleton adding an estimated 43% in value, raising the predicted mid-career salary of $76,236 to $117,700. In a 2012 study of higher education institutions, Carleton was listed as the most chosen as a peer institution, followed by Princeton and Oberlin.


title: Carleton College

text: Among American liberal arts institutions, Carleton College is one of the highest sources of undergraduate students pursuing doctorates per one hundred students. It has also been recognized for sending a large number of female students to graduate programs in the sciences. In the 2016–2017 school year, 9 Carleton graduates obtained a Fulbright grant from 28 applications. Among liberal arts colleges, the school is a "Top Producer of Fulbright Awards for American Students". To date, Carleton has produced 75 Watson Fellows.


title: Carleton College

text: Of those who applied, on average over 75% of Carleton graduates are accepted to medical school and about 90% to law school. Within five years of graduating, between 65% to 75% of graduates pursue postgraduate studies. The 15 most common graduate or professional schools attended by Carleton students are University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, Harvard, University of Chicago, University of Washington, Columbia, UC Berkeley, Northwestern, NYU, Yale, and Stanford. The most commonly pursued graduate programs are law, medicine, education, business administration, history, and chemistry.


title: Carleton College

text: Over 20% of all Carleton graduates since 1990 work in the business/finance/sales sector. Over 10% work in either healthcare or higher education. Pre K-12 education accounts for about 9% of graduates. Carleton graduates with only a bachelor's degree have an average mid-career salary of $113,800, according to self-reported data from PayScale.


title: Carleton College

text: 26.5% of the total student population are domestic students of color, 10.9% are among the first generation in their family to attend college, and 83.5% are U.S. citizens from out of state.


title: Carleton College

text: 10.2% of students are international, with the most represented countries being China (4.3%), South Korea (0.8%), India (0.7%), Canada (0.7%), and Japan (0.4%).


title: Carleton College

text: The school's nearly 240 active student organizations include three theater boards (coordinating as many as ten productions every term), long-form and short-form improv groups and a sketch comedy troupe, six "a cappella" groups, four choirs, seven specialized instrumental ensembles, five dance interest groups, two auditioned dance companies, a successful Mock Trial team, a nationally competitive debate program, seven recurring student publications, and the student-run 24-hour KRLX radio station, which employs more than 200 volunteers each term.


title: Carleton College

text: In five of the last twelve years, Carleton College students received the Best Delegation award at the World Model United Nations competition. In the 2013–2014 academic year, the school's team ranked among the top 25 in the nation.


title: Carleton College

text: The college's format-free student-run radio station, KRLX, founded in 1947 as KARL, was ranked by "The Princeton Review" as the nation's 4th best college radio station.


title: Carleton College

text: Carleton has numerous student traditions and a long history of student pranks. These include painting the college's water tower. Notably, a likeness of President Clinton was painted on the tower the night before his commencement speech in 2000. Early the following morning, college maintenance quickly painted over it (although in his speech, Clinton mentioned his amusement and regret it had been covered before he could see it). The administration's view of this particular phenomenon have changed over time. For liability-related reasons, climbing the water tower is now considered a grave infraction.


title: Carleton College

text: Friday Flowers and Late Night Breakfast on the eve of exams are other traditions that are popular as of 2021. Since 1990, Carleton students have played "Late Night Trivia", a game show broadcast over the college's radio station, KRLX, during the annual Winter Term exam period. Students compete in teams to identify songs and answer questions as well as participate in a variety of non-trivia challenges, the specifics of which vary greatly year-to-year.


title: Carleton College

text: A bust of Friedrich Schiller, known simply as "Schiller", has made regular appearances, though briefly, at large campus events. The tradition dates back to 1956, when two students absconded with the bust from Scoville Library during the process of transferring books from there to the new library. "Schiller" resided in their dorm rooms for a period, only to have the bust taken from them in turn. Possession of the bust escalated into an elaborate competition, which took on a high degree of secrecy and strategy.


title: Carleton College

text: Schiller's public appearances, accompanied with a cry of "Schiller!", are a tacit challenge to other students to try to capture the bust. The currently circulating bust of Schiller was retrieved from Puebla, Mexico in the summer of 2003. In 2006, students created an online scavenger hunt, made up of a series of complex riddles about Carleton, which led participants to Schiller's hidden location. The bust was stolen from the winner of the scavenger hunt. At commencement in 2006, the holders of the bust arranged for Schiller to "graduate". When his name was called at the appropriate moment, the bust was pulled from behind the podium and displayed.


title: Carleton College

text: In March 2010, the bust of Schiller appeared on "The Colbert Report". The appearance was organized by custodians of Schiller who contacted Peter Gwinn, a Carleton alumnus who was a writer for the program. The bust also appeared on a Halloween broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion" on Minnesota Public Radio.


title: Carleton College

text: In 1964, Carleton students named an intramural slow-pitch softball league after Marv Rotblatt, a former Chicago White Sox pitcher. Although traditional intramural softball is still played at Carleton, the name "Rotblatt" now refers to a campus-wide annual beer softball game that is played with one inning for every year of the school's over 150-year existence. The game begins at sunrise and lasts until the slated number of innings have been completed for that year. The only rule for gameplay is that in order to participate, all players must have a cup in one hand. In 1997, "Sports Illustrated" honored Rotblatt in its "Best of Everything" section with the award, "Longest Intramural Event". Rotblatt himself attended the game several times over the course of his life and appreciated the tradition.


title: Carleton College

text: A highly visible campus tradition is "Friday Flowers," where students can purchase individual flowers from a local florist and place them in one another's mailboxes each Friday of term. This tradition was in the news after three students died in a car accident en route to a frisbee tournament in 2014. Students at the nearby St. Olaf College sent over Friday Flowers for each student's mailbox. Later that fall, after a St. Olaf student died, Carleton returned the gesture.


title: Carleton College

text: Every first year student receives a frisbee on their first day of orientation. The design of the disc changes from year to year but always includes a penguin and the graduating year. At the Frisbee Toss Ceremony, students write their name on the frisbee, gather on the Bald Spot in a circle and throw their discs. This officially marks the beginning of a student's time at Carleton. After the toss, each new student collects a disc and eventually returns it to the original owner in the hopes of making a new friend.


title: Carleton College

text: The college campus was created in 1867 with the gifts of two parcels from local businessmen Charles M. Goodsell and Charles Augustus Wheaton. The 1,040-acre school campus is on a hill overlooking the Cannon River, at the northeast edge of Northfield. To the north and east is the 880-acre Cowling Arboretum, which was farm fields in the early years of the college. The area beyond the Arboretum is still largely devoted to agriculture.


title: Carleton College

text: The center of campus is an open field called "the Bald Spot," which is used for ultimate frisbee in the warmer months, and flooded to form an ice rink for skating and broomball in the winter. Most of the campus buildings constructed before World War II surround the Bald Spot.


title: Carleton College

text: Several of Carleton's older buildings have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Willis Hall, the first building on campus, was constructed from 1869 to 1872. Originally the hall contained the men's dormitory, classrooms, library, and chapel. The building was gutted by fire in 1879, after which it was entirely rebuilt within the existing stone shell. The original front of the building became the rear entrance with the construction of Severance Hall in 1928. As new buildings were constructed, various academic departments cycled through the building. Beginning in 1954, Willis served as the college student union, until it was replaced in 1979 by the Sayles-Hill Student Center, a converted gymnasium. Willis Hall now houses the Economics, Political Science, and Educational Studies offices. The college's clock bell tower and the main college flagpole, along with the radio tower for KRLX, are located on the roof.


title: Carleton College

text: Goodsell Observatory, also on the NRHP, was constructed in 1887 and at the time was the largest observatory in the state of Minnesota. It was named for Charles Goodsell, who donated land for the campus. From the late 19th century to the end of the World War II, Goodsell Observatory kept the time for every major railroad west of the Mississippi River, including Northern Pacific Railway, the Great Northern Railway, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, and the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway. Goodsell served as the headquarters of a state weather service from 1883 to 1886.


title: Carleton College

text: Scoville Hall (originally Scoville Memorial Library), completed in 1896, is on the NRHP. Replaced in function by the Gould Library in the 1950s, Scoville was adapted for administrative space.


title: Carleton College

text: Four nineteenth-century buildings have been demolished. Gridley Hall (1882) was the main women's dormitory for many years, and was torn down in 1967 for construction of the Music and Drama Center. Williams Hall (1880) was the college's first science building; it was demolished in 1961. Seccombe House (1880) was used for music instruction until 1914, and was located near the site of the current Skinner Chapel. The first observatory (1878) was replaced by Goodsell Observatory in 1887, and the old building was demolished in 1905 to make way for Laird Hall.


title: Carleton College

text: Laird Hall was built for science classes in 1905; the classical-revival building now houses the English department and administrative offices, including the president's office. Sayles-Hill was built as the first school gymnasium in 1910, and converted to a student center in 1979.


title: Carleton College

text: The eclectic styles of the eight buildings that made up the college in 1914, when Donald Cowling became president, were replaced by a uniform Collegiate Gothic style for the nine buildings erected during his tenure. Skinner Memorial Chapel, completed in 1916, is on the NRHP. Three connected western dorms were built for men: Burton Hall (1915), Davis Hall (1923), and Severance Hall (1928), and two residence halls were built for women: Nourse Hall (1917) and Margaret Evans Hall (1927). Evans Hall was notable for decades for its subdivision into adjacent columns of rooms off stairwells, rather than the more typical arrangement of floors of rooms on hallways. In the fall of 2012, Evans was heavily refurbished to modernize the internal layout and increase overall occupancy. Music Hall was built in 1914, and since the construction of the Music & Drama Center in 1967 has been referred to as Old Music Hall. Laird Stadium which stands at the site of the football and track field, was built in 1927. Leighton Hall (1920), originally built for the Chemistry department, now houses academic and administrative offices, including the business office.


title: Carleton College

text: The Great Depression and World War II essentially ended the construction boom for two decades. Boliou Hall was built in 1949 in a modernist style, using yellow sandstone as a major element. It was enlarged using a similar style and materials in the early 1990s. The Library was built in 1956 in a similar style, but was expanded in a brick-based style in the mid 1980s. It was renamed the Gould Memorial Library in 1995 for former President Larry Gould. Musser and Myers Halls were built in 1958 as men's and women's dorms respectively, in a bare-bones modernist brick style.


title: Carleton College

text: Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the Northwestern National Life Building in Minneapolis and of the original New York World Trade Center, designed five buildings at Carleton in the 1960s. Olin Hall of Science (1961) has a distinctive "radiator" grill work on the exterior. Goodhue (1962) and Watson (1966) Halls were built as dormitories. At seven floors, Watson is the tallest building on campus. The West Gym (1964) and Cowling Gym (1965) were built to replace Sayles-Hill for indoor athletic facilities, originally for men and women respectively.


title: Carleton College

text: Carleton built a new Recreation Center in 2000. A full indoor fieldhouse is located above a fitness center, which includes a climbing wall and bouldering wall.


title: Carleton College

text: In the fall of 2011, the Weitz Center for Creativity opened up in a renovated middle school. The Center includes a cinema and a live theater, and is the new home of the Cinema and Media Studies (CAMS) department, and the associated recording and production studios. It is also the home of Presentation, Event and Production Services (PEPS).


title: Carleton College

text: The Cowling Arboretum, "the Arb", was initially created from lands purchased in the 1920s by President Donald J. Cowling. As the college was having difficult financial times, it was first called "Cowling's Folly" but later became his legacy. After Carleton Farm was closed, its acreage was added to the Arboretum.


title: Carleton College

text: Since 1970 acreage has been removed from cultivation in sections. The Arboretum has approximately of restored and remnant forest, Cannon River floodplain, bur oak ("Quercus macrocarpa") savannah, and tallgrass prairie. The Arboretum is divided by Minnesota Highway 19 into the larger Lower Arb to the north (so-called because it includes the Cannon River valley) and the smaller Upper Arb. Pedestrian trails are located throughout the Arboretum, as well as the school's cross-country running and skiing courses, and a paved mixed-use bicycle/running trail in the Upper Arb.


title: Carleton College

text: The College Sustainability Report Card, which evaluated 200 colleges and universities with the largest endowments in the United States and Canada, Carleton received a grade of A−, earning the award of "Overall College Sustainability Leader". A wind turbine located near the campus generates the equivalent of up to 40 percent of Carleton's electrical energy use; it is configured to sell this power back to the local grid for the most efficient use system wide. In late 2011, Carleton installed a second wind turbine that provides power directly to the campus, providing more than 25 percent of the college's electrical energy use.


title: Carleton College

text: The Carleton athletic teams are called the Knights. The college is a member of the Division III level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), primarily competing in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) since the 1983–84 academic year; which they were a member on a previous stint from 1920–21 to 1924–25. The Knights previously competed in the Midwest Conference (MWC) from 1925–26 to 1982–83; although Carleton had dual conference membership with the MWC and the MIAC between 1921–22 and 1924–25. All students must participate in physical education or athletic activities to fulfill graduation requirements.


title: Carleton College

text: Carleton competes in 20 intercollegiate varsity sports (10 for men and 10 for women): Men's sports include baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, soccer, swimming, tennis and track & field; while women's sports include basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track & field and volleyball.


title: Carleton College

text: Carleton's biggest athletic rival is St. Olaf College, located on the other side of Northfield. The Knights and the Oles contest six trophies in yearly matchups. The first trophy, The Goat, was created in 1913 and goes to the winning men's basketball team.


title: Carleton College

text: Carleton won its first and only team national title in 1980 when the men's cross country team won the NCAA division three cross country national championship.


title: Carleton College

text: The student-run Ultimate clubs have had the national success; the school's top men's team, Carleton Ultimate Team (CUT), and women's team, Syzygy, are perennial national contenders in the USA Ultimate College Division I tournaments. CUT has qualified annually for nationals since 1989, and won the National Championship in 2001, 2009, 2011, and 2017. Syzygy has qualified for women's nationals all but one year since 1987, and won the National Championship in 2000. The other men's Ultimate team, the Gods of Plastic, won the 2010 and 2012 College Division III Open National Championships, and the other women's Ultimate team, Eclipse, won the College Division III Women's nationals in 2011, 2016, and 2017. Carleton founded the first women's rugby club in the state of Minnesota in 1978 and went on to win the Division III National Championship in 2011.


title: Carleton College

text: Pamela Dean set her fantasy novel "Tam Lin" (1991) at a fictional "Blackstock College", based on Dean's alma mater, Carleton. Dean's author's note begins, "Readers acquainted with Carleton College will find much that is familiar to them in the architecture, landscape, classes, terminology, and general atmosphere of Blackstock." Blackstock's buildings were given names that reference their counterparts at Carleton (e.g. Watson Hall becomes Holmes Hall, referring to Sherlock Holmes; Burton Hall becomes Taylor Hall, referring to the marriages of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor).


title: Carleton College

text: Ben Wyatt, a character from NBC's "Parks and Recreation", graduated from Carleton with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science.


title: Carleton College

text: Notable graduates of Carleton College include economist Thorstein Veblen (1880), US Supreme Court Justice Pierce Butler (1887), research chemist Ray Wendland (1933), pioneer in women's abortion rights Jane Elizabeth Hodgson (1934), US Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird (1942), Intelligence Officer John J. Hicks (1943), NBC television journalist and "Meet the Press" host Garrick Utley (1961), geologist Walter Alvarez (1962), chemist Robert G. Bergman (1963), geneticist and discoverer of BRCA1 Mary-Claire King (1967), European historian Lynn Hunt (1967), historian of American sexuality and gender Kathy Peiss (1975), bestselling author of thriller novels Lincoln Child (1979), dean and law professor Margaret Raymond (1982), astrobiologist and president of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Douglas Vakoch (1983), co-founder of the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School professor Todd Golub (1985), editor-in-chief of "Politico" John F. Harris (1985), two time Pulitzer Prize winning historian T.J. Stiles (1986), editor of Mother Jones magazine Clara Jeffery (1989), American journalist and television personality Jonathan Capehart (1990), children's television host Chris Kratt (1992), award-winning speculative fiction writer and blogger Naomi Kritzer (1995), climber and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jimmy Chin (1996), singer-songwriter Laura Veirs (1997), writer Aisha Sabatini Sloan (2003), professional basketball player Freddie Gillespie (2017), and nutrition researcher Genevieve Stearns.


title: Carleton College

text: Notable faculty have included Ian Barbour, winner of the 1999 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion; Laurence McKinley Gould, Antarctic explorer; Burton Levin, US Ambassador to Burma (1987-1990); and Paul Wellstone, U.S. Senator from Minnesota 1991–2002.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: PIC (usually pronounced as ""pick"") is a family of microcontrollers made by Microchip Technology, derived from the PIC1650 originally developed by General Instrument's Microelectronics Division. The name PIC initially referred to "Peripheral Interface Controller", and is currently expanded as "Programmable Intelligent Computer".


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The first parts of the family were available in 1976; by 2013 the company had shipped more than twelve billion individual parts, used in a wide variety of embedded systems.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The PIC was originally intended to be used with the General Instrument CP1600, the first commercially available single-chip 16-bit microprocessor. The CP1600 had a complex bus that made it difficult to interface with, and the PIC was introduced as a companion device offering ROM for program storage, RAM for temporary data handling, and a simple CPU for controlling the transfers. While this offered considerable power, GI's marketing was limited and the CP1600 was not a success. When the company spun off their chip division to form Microchip in 1985, sales of the CP1600 were all but dead. By this time, the PIC had formed a major market of its own, and it became one of the new company's primary products.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Early models only had mask ROM for code storage, but with its spinoff it was soon upgraded to use EPROM and then EEPROM which made it much easier for end-users to program. All current models use flash memory for program storage, and newer models allow the PIC to reprogram itself. Since then the line has seen significant change; memory is now available in 8-bit, 16-bit, and, in latest models, 32-bit wide. Program instructions vary in bit-count by family of PIC, and may be 12, 14, 16, or 24 bits long. The instruction set also varies by model, with more powerful chips adding instructions for digital signal processing functions. The hardware implementations of PIC devices range from 6-pin SMD, 8-pin DIP chips up to 144-pin SMD chips, with discrete I/O pins, ADC and DAC modules, and communications ports such as UART, I2C, CAN, and even USB. Low-power and high-speed variations exist for many types.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The manufacturer supplies computer software for development known as MPLAB X, assemblers and C/C++ compilers, and programmer/debugger hardware under the MPLAB and PICKit series. Third party and some open-source tools are also available. Some parts have in-circuit programming capability; low-cost development programmers are available as well as high-volume production programmers.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: PIC devices are popular with both industrial developers and hobbyists due to their low cost, wide availability, large user base, an extensive collection of application notes, availability of low cost or free development tools, serial programming, and re-programmable flash-memory capability.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The original PIC was intended to be used with General Instrument's new CP1600 16-bit central processing unit (CPU). In order to fit 16-bit data bus and address bus into a then-standard 40-pin dual inline package (DIP) chip, the two busses shared the same set of 16 connection pins. In order to communicate with the CPU, devices had to watch other pins on the CPU to determine if the data on the bus was an address or data. Since only one of these was being presented at a time, the devices had to watch the bus to go into address mode, see if that address was part of its memory mapped input/output range, "latch" that address and then wait for the data mode to turn on and then read the value. Additionally, the 1600 used several external pins to select which device it was attempting to talk to, further complicating the interfacing.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: As interfacing devices to the 1600 could be complex, GI also released a series of support chips with all of the required circuitry built-in. These included keyboard drivers, cassette deck interfaces for storage, and a host of similar systems. For more complex systems, GI introduced the 8-bit PIC in 1975. The idea was that a device would use the PIC to handle all the interfacing with the host computer's CP1600, but also use its own internal processor to handle the actual device it was connected to. For instance, a floppy disk drive could be implemented with a PIC talking to the CPU on one side and the floppy disk controller on the other. In keeping with this idea, what would today be known as a microcontroller, the PIC included a small amount of read-only memory (ROM) that would be written with the user's device controller code, and a separate random access memory (RAM) for buffering and working with data. These were connected separately, making the PIC a Harvard architecture system with code and data being managed on separate internal pathways.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In theory, the combination of 1600 CPU and PIC device controllers provided a very high-performance device control system, one that was similar in power and performance to the channel controllers see on mainframe computers. In the floppy controller example, for instance, a single PIC could control the drive, provide a reasonable amount of buffering to improve performance, and then transfer data to and from the host computer using direct memory access (DMA) or through relatively simple code in the CPU. The downside to this approach was cost; while the PIC was not necessary for low-speed devices like a keyboard, many tasks would require one or more PICs to build out a complete system.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: While the design concept had a number of attractive features, General Instrument never strongly marketed the 1600, preferring to deal only with large customers and ignoring the low-end market. This resulted in very little uptake of the system, with the Intellivision being the only really widespread use with about three million units. When GI spun off its chip division to form Microchip Technology in 1985, production of the CP1600 ended. By this time, however, the PIC had developed a large market of customers using it for a wide variety of roles, and the PIC went on to become one of the new company's primary products.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In 1985, General Instrument sold their microelectronics division and the new owners cancelled almost everything which by this time was mostly out-of-date. The PIC, however, was upgraded with an internal EPROM to produce a programmable channel controller.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: At the same time Plessey in the UK released NMOS processors numbered PIC1650 and PIC1655 based on the GI design, using the same instruction sets, either user mask programmable or versions pre-programmed for auto-diallers and keyboard interfaces.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In 1998 Microchip introduced the PIC 16F84, a flash programmable and erasable version of its successful serial programmable PIC16C84.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In 2001, Microchip introduced more Flash programmable devices, with full production commencing in 2002.{


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Today, a huge variety of PICs are available with various on-board peripherals (serial communication modules, UARTs, motor control kernels, etc.) and program memory from 256 words to 64K words and more (a "word" is one assembly language instruction, varying in length from 8 to 16 bits, depending on the specific PIC micro family).


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: PIC and PICmicro are now registered trademarks of Microchip Technology. It is generally thought that PIC stands for Peripheral Interface Controller, although General Instruments' original acronym for the initial PIC1640 and PIC1650 devices was "Programmable Interface Controller". The acronym was quickly replaced with "Programmable Intelligent Computer".


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The Microchip 16C84 (PIC16x84), introduced in 1993, was the first Microchip CPU with on-chip EEPROM memory.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: PIC micro chips are designed with a Harvard architecture, and are offered in various device families. The baseline and mid-range families use 8-bit wide data memory, and the high-end families use 16-bit data memory. The latest series, PIC32MZ is a 32-bit MIPS-based microcontroller. Instruction words are in sizes of 12-bit (PIC10 and PIC12), 14-bit (PIC16) and 24-bit (PIC24 and dsPIC). The binary representations of the machine instructions vary by family and are shown in PIC instruction listings.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Within these families, devices may be designated PICnnCxxx (CMOS) or PICnnFxxx (Flash). "C" devices are generally classified as "Not suitable for new development" (not actively promoted by Microchip). The program memory of "C" devices is variously described as OTP, ROM, or EEPROM. As of October 2016, the only OTP product classified as "In production" is the pic16HV540. "C" devices with quartz windows (for erasure), are in general no longer available.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: These devices feature a 12-bit wide code memory, a 32-byte register file, and a tiny two level deep call stack. They are represented by the PIC10 series, as well as by some PIC12 and PIC16 devices. Baseline devices are available in 6-pin to 40-pin packages.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Generally the first 7 to 9 bytes of the register file are special-purpose registers, and the remaining bytes are general purpose RAM. Pointers are implemented using a register pair: after writing an address to the FSR (file select register), the INDF (indirect f) register becomes an alias for the addressed register. If banked RAM is implemented, the bank number is selected by the high 3 bits of the FSR. This affects register numbers 16–31; registers 0–15 are global and not affected by the bank select bits.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Because of the very limited register space (5 bits), 4 rarely read registers were not assigned addresses, but written by special instructions (codice_1 and codice_2).


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The ROM address space is 512 wand may only specify addresses in the first half of each 512-word page. That is, the CALL instruction specifies the low 9 bits of the address, but only the low 8 bits of that address are a parameter of the instruction, while the 9th bit (bit 8) is implicitly specified as 0 by the CALL instruction itself.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Lookup tables are implemented using a computed codice_3 (assignment to PCL register) into a table of codice_4 instructions. RETLW returns returning in the W register an 8-bit immediate constant that is encoded into the instruction.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: This "baseline core" does "not" support interrupts; all I/O must be polled. There are some "enhanced baseline" variants with interrupt support and a four-level call stack.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: PIC10F32x devices feature a mid-range 14-bit wide code memory of 256 or 512 words, a 64-byte SRAM register file, and an 8-level deep hardware stack. These devices are available in 6-pin SMD and 8-pin DIP packages (with two pins unused). One input only and three I/O pins are available. A complex set of interrupts are available. Clocks are an internal calibrated high-frequency oscillator of 16 MHz with a choice of selectable speeds via software and a 31 kHz low-power source.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: These devices feature a 14-bit wide code memory, and an improved 8-level deep call stack. The instruction set differs very little from the baseline devices, but the two additional opcode bits allow 128 registers and 2048 words of code to be directly addressed. There are a few additional miscellaneous instructions, and two additional 8-bit literal instructions, add and subtract. The mid-range core is available in the majority of devices labeled PIC12 and PIC16.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The first 32 bytes of the register space are allocated to special-purpose registers; the remaining 96 bytes are used for general-purpose RAM. If banked RAM is used, the high 16 registers (0x70–0x7F) are global, as are a few of the most important special-purpose registers, including the STATUS register which holds the RAM bank select bits. (The other global registers are FSR and INDF, the low 8 bits of the program counter PCL, the PC high preload register PCLATH, and the master interrupt control register INTCON.)


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The PCLATH register supplies high-order instruction address bits when the 8 bits supplied by a write to the PCL register, or the 11 bits supplied by a codice_3 or codice_6 instruction, is not sufficient to address the available ROM space.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The 17 series never became popular and has been superseded by the PIC18 architecture (however, see clones below). The 17 series is not recommended for new designs, and availability may be limited to users.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Improvements over earlier cores are 16-bit wide opcodes (allowing many new instructions), and a 16-level deep call stack. PIC17 devices were produced in packages from 40 to 68 pins.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: A significant limitation was that RAM space was limited to 256 bytes (26 bytes of special function registers, and 232 bytes of general-purpose RAM), with awkward bank-switching in the models that supported more.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In 2000, Microchip introduced the PIC18 architecture. Unlike the 17 series, it has proven to be very popular, with a large number of device variants presently in manufacture. In contrast to earlier devices, which were more often than not programmed in assembly, C has become the predominant development language.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The 18 series inherits most of the features and instructions of the 17 series, while adding a number of important new features:


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The RAM space is 12 bits, addressed using a 4-bit bank select register and an 8-bit offset in each instruction. An additional "access" bit in each instruction selects between bank 0 ("a"=0) and the bank selected by the BSR ("a"=1).


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: A 1-level stack is also available for the STATUS, WREG and BSR registers. They are saved on every interrupt, and may be restored on return. If interrupts are disabled, they may also be used on subroutine call/return by setting the "s" bit (appending ", FAST" to the instruction).


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The auto increment/decrement feature was improved by removing the control bits and adding four new indirect registers per FSR. Depending on which indirect file register is being accessed it is possible to postdecrement, postincrement, or preincrement FSR; or form the effective address by adding W to FSR.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In more advanced PIC18 devices, an "extended mode" is available which makes the addressing even more favorable to compiled code:


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In 2001, Microchip introduced the dsPIC series of chips, which entered mass production in late 2004. They are Microchip's first inherently 16-bit microcontrollers. PIC24 devices are designed as general purpose microcontrollers. dsPIC devices include digital signal processing capabilities in addition.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: dsPICs can be programmed in C using Microchip's XC16 compiler (formerly called C30) which is a variant of GCC.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Instruction ROM is 24 bits wide. Software can access ROM in 16-bit words, where even words hold the least significant 16 bits of each instruction, and odd words hold the most significant 8 bits. The high half of odd words reads as zero. The program counter is 23 bits wide, but the least significant bit is always 0, so there are 22 modifiable bits.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Instructions come in two main varieties, with most important operations (add, xor, shifts, etc.) allowing both forms.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The first is like the classic PIC instructions, with an operation between a specified f register (i.e. the first 8K of RAM) and a single accumulator W0, with a destination select bit selecting which is updated with the result. (The W registers are memory-mapped. so the f operand may be any W register.)


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The second form is more conventional, allowing three operands, which may be any of 16 W registers. The destination and one of the sources also support addressing modes, allowing the operand to be in memory pointed to by a W register.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In November 2007, Microchip introduced the PIC32MX family of 32-bit microcontrollers, based on the MIPS32 M4K Core. The device can be programmed using the Microchip MPLAB C Compiler for PIC32 MCUs, a variant of the GCC compiler. The first 18 models currently in production (PIC32MX3xx and PIC32MX4xx) are pin to pin compatible and share the same peripherals set with the PIC24FxxGA0xx family of (16-bit) devices allowing the use of common libraries, software and hardware tools. Today, starting at 28 pin in small QFN packages up to high performance devices with Ethernet, CAN and USB OTG, full family range of mid-range 32-bit microcontrollers are available.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In November 2013, Microchip introduced the PIC32MZ series of microcontrollers, based on the MIPS M14K core. The PIC32MZ series include:


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In 2015, Microchip released the PIC32MZ EF family, using the updated MIPS M5150 Warrior M-class processor.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In 2017, Microchip introduced the PIC32MZ DA Family, featuring an integrated Graphics Controller, Graphics Processor and 32MB of DDR2 DRAM.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In June 2016, Microchip introduced the PIC32MM family, specialized for low-power and low-cost applications. The PIC32MM features core-independent peripherals, sleep modes down to 500 nA, and 4 x 4 mm packages. The PIC32MM microcontrollers use the MIPS Technologies M4K, a 32-bit MIPS32 processor.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Their key advantage is to support the 16bits instructions of MIPS making program size much more compact (about 40%)


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Microchip introduced the PIC32MK family in 2017, specialized for motor control, industrial control, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and multi-channel CAN applications.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: There is no distinction between memory space and register space because the RAM serves the job of both memory and registers, and the RAM is usually just referred to as the register file or simply as the registers.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: PICs have a set of registers that function as general-purpose RAM. Special-purpose control registers for on-chip hardware resources are also mapped into the data space. The addressability of memory varies depending on device series, and all PIC device types have some banking mechanism to extend addressing to additional memory (but some device models have only one bank implemented). Later series of devices feature move instructions, which can cover the whole addressable space, independent of the selected bank. In earlier devices, any register move must be achieved through the accumulator.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: To implement indirect addressing, a "file select register" (FSR) and "indirect register" (INDF) are used. A register number is written to the FSR, after which reads from or writes to INDF will actually be from or to the register pointed to by FSR. Later devices extended this concept with post- and pre- increment/decrement for greater efficiency in accessing sequentially stored data. This also allows FSR to be treated almost like a stack pointer (SP).


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: External data memory is not directly addressable except in some PIC18 devices with high pin count. However, general I/O ports can be used to implement a parallel bus or a serial interface for accessing external memory and other peripherals (using subroutines), with the caveat that such programmed memory access is (of course) much slower than access to the native memory of the PIC MCU.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The code space is generally implemented as on-chip ROM, EPROM or flash ROM. In general, there is no provision for storing code in external memory due to the lack of an external memory interface. The exceptions are PIC17 and select high pin count PIC18 devices.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: All PICs handle (and address) data in 8-bit chunks. However, the unit of addressability of the code space is not generally the same as the data space. For example, PICs in the baseline (PIC12) and mid-range (PIC16) families have program memory addressable in the same wordsize as the instruction width, i.e. 12 or 14 bits respectively. In contrast, in the PIC18 series, the program memory is addressed in 8-bit increments (bytes), which differs from the instruction width of 16 bits.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: In order to be clear, the program memory capacity is usually stated in number of (single-word) instructions, rather than in bytes.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: PICs have a hardware call stack, which is used to save return addresses. The hardware stack is not software-accessible on earlier devices, but this changed with the 18 series devices.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Hardware support for a general-purpose parameter stack was lacking in early series, but this greatly improved in the 18 series, making the 18 series architecture more friendly to high-level language compilers.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: PIC's instructions vary from about 35 instructions for the low-end PICs to over 80 instructions for the high-end PICs. The instruction set includes instructions to perform a variety of operations on registers directly, the accumulator and a literal constant or the accumulator and a register, as well as for conditional execution, and program branching.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Some operations, such as bit setting and testing, can be performed on any numbered register, but bi-operand arithmetic operations always involve W (the accumulator), writing the result back to either W or the other operand register. To load a constant, it is necessary to load it into W before it can be moved into another register. On the older cores, all register moves needed to pass through W, but this changed on the "high-end" cores.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: PIC cores have skip instructions, which are used for conditional execution and branching. The skip instructions are "skip if bit set" and "skip if bit not set". Because cores before PIC18 had only unconditional branch instructions, conditional jumps are implemented by a conditional skip (with the opposite condition) followed by an unconditional branch. Skips are also of utility for conditional execution of any immediate single following instruction. It is possible to skip skip instructions. For example, the instruction sequence "skip if A; skip if B; C" will execute C if A is true or if B is false.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The 18 series implemented shadow registers, registers which save several important registers during an interrupt, providing hardware support for automatically saving processor state when servicing interrupts.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The architectural decisions are directed at the maximization of speed-to-cost ratio. The PIC architecture was among the first scalar CPU designs and is still among the simplest and cheapest. The Harvard architecture, in which instructions and data come from separate sources, simplifies timing and microcircuit design greatly, and this benefits clock speed, price, and power consumption.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The PIC instruction set is suited to implementation of fast lookup tables in the program space. Such lookups take one instruction and two instruction cycles. Many functions can be modeled in this way. Optimization is facilitated by the relatively large program space of the PIC (e.g. 4096 × 14-bit words on the 16F690) and by the design of the instruction set, which allows embedded constants. For example, a branch instruction's target may be indexed by W, and execute a "RETLW", which does as it is named return with literal in W.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Interrupt latency is constant at three instruction cycles. External interrupts have to be synchronized with the four-clock instruction cycle, otherwise there can be a one instruction cycle jitter. Internal interrupts are already synchronized. The constant interrupt latency allows PICs to achieve interrupt-driven low-jitter timing sequences. An example of this is a video sync pulse generator. This is no longer true in the newest PIC models, because they have a synchronous interrupt latency of three or four cycles.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The following stack limitations have been addressed in the PIC18 series, but still apply to earlier cores:


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: With paged program memory, there are two page sizes to worry about: one for CALL and GOTO and another for computed GOTO (typically used for table lookups). For example, on PIC16, CALL and GOTO have 11 bits of addressing, so the page size is 2048 instruction words. For computed GOTOs, where you add to PCL, the page size is 256 instruction words. In both cases, the upper address bits are provided by the PCLATH register. This register must be changed every time control transfers between pages. PCLATH must also be preserved by any interrupt handler.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: While several commercial compilers are available, in 2008, Microchip released their own C compilers, C18 and C30, for the line of 18F 24F and 30/33F processors.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: As of 2013, Microchip offers their XC series of compilers, for use with MPLAB X. Microchip will eventually phase out its older compilers, such as C18, and recommends using their XC series compilers for new designs.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The RISC instruction set of the PIC assembly language code can make the overall flow difficult to comprehend. Judicious use of simple macros can increase the readability of PIC assembly language. For example, the original Parallax PIC assembler ("SPASM") has macros, which hide W and make the PIC look like a two-address machine. It has macro instructions like codice_15 (move the data from address "a" to address "b") and codice_16 (add data from address "a" to data in address "b"). It also hides the skip instructions by providing three-operand branch macro instructions, such as codice_17 (compare "a" with "b" and jump to "dest" if they are not equal).


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Within a series, there are still many device variants depending on what hardware resources the chip features:


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The first generation of PICs with EPROM storage are almost completely replaced by chips with Flash memory. Likewise, the original 12-bit instruction set of the PIC1650 and its direct descendants has been superseded by 14-bit and 16-bit instruction sets. Microchip still sells OTP (one-time-programmable) and windowed (UV-erasable) versions of some of its EPROM based PICs for legacy support or volume orders. The Microchip website lists PICs that are not electrically erasable as OTP. UV erasable windowed versions of these chips can be ordered.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The F in a PICMicro part number generally indicates the PICmicro uses flash memory and can be erased electronically. Conversely, a C generally means it can only be erased by exposing the die to ultraviolet light (which is only possible if a windowed package style is used). An exception to this rule is the PIC16C84 which uses EEPROM and is therefore electrically erasable.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: An L in the name indicates the part will run at a lower voltage, often with frequency limits imposed. Parts designed specifically for low voltage operation, within a strict range of 3 - 3.6 volts, are marked with a J in the part number. These parts are also uniquely I/O tolerant as they will accept up to 5 V as inputs.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Microchip provides a freeware IDE package called MPLAB X, which includes an assembler, linker, software simulator, and debugger. They also sell C compilers for the PIC10, PIC12, PIC16, PIC18, PIC24, PIC32 and dsPIC, which integrate cleanly with MPLAB X. Free versions of the C compilers are also available with all features. But for the free versions, optimizations will be disabled after 60 days.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Several third parties develop C language compilers for PICs, many of which integrate to MPLAB and/or feature their own IDE. A fully featured compiler for the PICBASIC language to program PIC microcontrollers is available from meLabs, Inc. Mikroelektronika offers PIC compilers in C, BASIC and Pascal programming languages.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: A graphical programming language, Flowcode, exists capable of programming 8- and 16-bit PIC devices and generating PIC-compatible C code. It exists in numerous versions from a free demonstration to a more complete professional edition.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The Proteus Design Suite is able to simulate many of the popular 8 and 16-bit PIC devices along with other circuitry that is connected to the PIC on the schematic. The program to be simulated can be developed within Proteus itself, MPLAB or any other development tool.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Devices called "programmers" are traditionally used to get program code into the target PIC. Most PICs that Microchip currently sells feature ICSP (in-circuit serial programming) and/or LVP (low-voltage programming) capabilities, allowing the PIC to be programmed while it is sitting in the target circuit.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Microchip offers programmers/debuggers under the MPLAB and PICKit series. MPLAB ICD4 and MPLAB REAL ICE are the current programmers and debuggers for professional engineering, while PICKit 3 is a low-cost programmer / debugger line for hobbyists and students.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Many of the higher end flash based PICs can also self-program (write to their own program memory), a process known as bootloading. Demo boards are available with a small bootloader factory programmed that can be used to load user programs over an interface such as RS-232 or USB, thus obviating the need for a programmer device.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Alternatively there is bootloader firmware available that the user can load onto the PIC using ICSP. After programming the bootloader onto the PIC, the user can then reprogram the device using RS232 or USB, in conjunction with specialized computer software.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: The advantages of a bootloader over ICSP is faster programming speeds, immediate program execution following programming, and the ability to both debug and program using the same cable.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: There are many programmers for PIC microcontrollers, ranging from the extremely simple designs which rely on ICSP to allow direct download of code from a host computer, to intelligent programmers that can verify the device at several supply voltages. Many of these complex programmers use a pre-programmed PIC themselves to send the programming commands to the PIC that is to be programmed. The intelligent type of programmer is needed to program earlier PIC models (mostly EPROM type) which do not support in-circuit programming.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: Third party programmers range from plans to build your own, to self-assembly kits and fully tested ready-to-go units. Some are simple designs which require a PC to do the low-level programming signalling (these typically connect to the serial or parallel port and consist of a few simple components), while others have the programming logic built into them (these typically use a serial or USB connection, are usually faster, and are often built using PICs themselves for control).


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: All newer PIC devices feature an ICD (in-circuit debugging) interface, built into the CPU core, that allows for interactive debugging of the program in conjunction with MPLAB IDE. MPLAB ICD and MPLAB REAL ICE debuggers can communicate with this interface using the ICSP interface.


title: PIC microcontrollers

text: This debugging system comes at a price however, namely limited breakpoint count (1 on older devices, 3 on newer devices), loss of some I/O (with the exception of some surface mount 44-pin PICs which have dedicated lines for debugging) and loss of some on-chip features.