Breadboard and X Boards in PICSimLab: The Generic PIC/AVR Boards
Most PICSimLab boards imitate a specific commercial product. Two do not: the Breadboard and the X board are generic boards — minimal carriers with only the essentials — designed so you build the actual circuit yourself from spare parts. They are also the most flexible boards in the simulator: the Breadboard is the only board that works with two different simulator backends.
Overview
The Breadboard is a generic board with only reset, serial and crystal circuits, and it supports both the picsim and the simavr backends, so it can host PIC and AVR microcontrollers alike. The X board is the generic example board used by the official “Creating New Boards” tutorial; in PICSimLab it runs three popular PIC chips on picsim. On both boards, everything beyond the chip itself — LEDs, buttons, displays, sensors — comes from Modules → Spare parts.
Supported MCUs
| Board | Microcontrollers | Backend |
|---|---|---|
| Breadboard | Multiple PIC (picsim) and AVR (simavr) chips — the exact list depends on the selected backend; PICSimLab can list a board’s chips at runtime (for example via the remote control buclist command). The official code templates include parts such as the PIC18F67J60 on the PIC side and the ATmega2560 / ATmega328P / ATtiny85 on the AVR side. |
picsim + simavr |
| X | PIC16F877A, PIC18F4550, PIC18F4620 | picsim |
Backend & debugging
Debugging follows whichever backend is active. On the picsim side (and always on the X board) debugging is MPLAB X Integrated Debug via the PICSimLab plugin. On the simavr side you get MPLAB X integration plus remote avr-gdb debugging. Project generation follows the same split: MPLAB X + XC8 projects for PIC16F/PIC18F boards, VSCode + PlatformIO projects for AVR boards.
What you can do
- Prototype a circuit from scratch: chip on the Breadboard, then wire up the LEDs and push buttons spare parts exactly where your design needs them.
- Run the standard PIC projects on the X board — the chip trio overlaps the McLab2 list, so the PIC16F877A blink tutorial and the PIC18F4550 first project apply directly.
- Probe any pin with the built-in two-channel oscilloscope while you experiment.
- Use the X board as the starting point if you want to learn how PICSimLab boards are defined, following the official board-creation tutorial it comes from.
Real limits
- “Generic” means minimal: both boards provide little more than reset, serial and crystal circuitry. There is no rich onboard peripheral set to lean on — if your project needs a display or a keypad, you add it as a spare part yourself.
- The Breadboard’s chip list is backend-dependent and is not a single fixed table; do not assume a specific PIC or AVR is available until you have selected the board and checked. It is a flexible carrier, not a promise that every picsim or simavr chip works on it.
- picsim and simavr keep their own documented limits (see the McLab2 and Arduino Uno/Nano pages) — the generic board does not remove them.
Download PICSimLab from the download page and pick the Breadboard or X board when your project does not match a commercial board.