PIC32-HMZ144 pin out

[Jorgen]

I am using the PIC32-HMZ144 and I find it a great pity that none of the 16 bit IO ports are fully available on the EXT1 or EXT2 connectors. On EXT2 the RJ port is accessible except for RJ5 which is used for the SD-card present contact. The RH port is also accessible on EXT2 except for RH2 which is used to lit a green LED. One strength of the PIC32MZ processor is the availability of 16 bit IO ports, so at least one should be accessible in full.

Please, consider to make all 16 bits accessible of the RJ or RH IO port on EXT2 together with some additional IO bits allowing to implement chip select and write and read pulses. Maybe EXT2 should be split into EXT2A and EXT2B for RJ and RH ports respectively and some additional signals (chip selects, read and write pulses etc) to control external units.

I am aware all 16 bits of the PMD are accessible together with PMRD and PMWR. The address lines PMA are also available. However, both the PMD and the PMA are scattered randomly on EXT1 and EXT2 and they occupy several PPS enabled pins. The RJ and RH ports do not include any PPS enabled pins.

Finally, please consider to include more than one UEXT or make additional UART, SPI and I2C accessible on connectors with a low pin count including a couple of chip selects for UART and SPI. I find it fully acceptable that the same processor IO bit is accessible on more than one connector. The PPS feature of the PIC32MZ processor provides flexibility on the use of the processor pins.

Maybe add another set of pins such that all pins of the processor are accessible.

Regards,
Jorgen

[wayland]

Why stop there?  I'd personally like to see one of the PIC32MK GPD series broken out.  2xUSB, 6xUART, I believe.  I have a project that I'd like to use those USBs and UARTs for.