The PIC17C42 microcontroller is an excellent choice for cost-effective servo control in embedded applications. Due to its Harvard architecture and RISC features, the PIC17C42 offers excellent computation speed needed for real-time closed loop servo control. This application note examines the use of the PIC17C42 as a DC brush motor servo controller. It is shown that a PID (Proportional, Integral, Differential) control calculation can be performed in less than 200ms (@16 MHz) allowing control loop sample times in the 2 kHz range. Encoder rates up to 3 MHz are easily handled by the PIC17C42's high speed peripherals. Further, the on-chip peripherals allow an absolute minimum cost system to be constructed.