Having built my own programmer for all chips (including pics) I decided
to use the Promaster when I finally had to program several thousands in
"production" quality. I was quite disappointed for the reasons already
mentioned in this list, but mainly by:

No quick way to program a single chip in a more or less automatic way.
The GUI takes forever to just connect and I was unable to figure out
how to run a session with a batch-file.

Furthermore, I'm used to Unix, both at work and at home (Linux). So this
is what I did:

1. Trace all accesses to the UART 
2. Figure out (parts of) the protocol
3. Write a C-Program that does what I need

I don't have to leave Unix now for a complete developement cycle
and can even personalize each chip in a much more flexible way than
Promaster provides for. Note that I didn't reverse engineer any of
the code, which is explicitely prohibited by the license agreement.

Although I'm still not completely happy (the promaster's programming
cycle is too long in my opinion), I can live with this situation.
(Basically, now the hardware is the problem. I use the SMD-package
 and the contact gold (sp?) of the fingers seems to wear off. I'm
 at about 3000 pieces now, which is certainly not too much for a 
 "production" quality programmer.)

If someone is interested in this piece of software I can try to upload
it to some ftp-server. Obviously, NO WARRANTY. 

I would be even more delighted if someone took the time to enhance the
tool, because of the following deficiencies/limitations:

- does not generate proper checksum (the protocol has one)
  Current solution: 
  1. send data (will produce NOT OK as acknowlegdement)
  2. read data back
  3. compare sent/read data
  4. start programming if match

- does not support anything else than C71

- does not allow setting of programming parameters


Regards,

Mike

-- 
Dipl.-Ing. Michael Hermann   mch@regent.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de
Lehrstuhl fuer Rechnergestuetztes Entwerfen,     Postfach 202420
Technische Universitaet Muenchen                    089/21053657