> I thought I had settled on the Parallax one, but I found out that there's
a
> Microchip seminar coming to town (Vancouver), and that I can get the
> "PICSTART development system" for $79US there. The seminar costs $99US,
so
> that puts my total cost at about the same as the Parallax programmer.
They
> tell me that the seminar is very informative (5.5 hrs), and that you get
> books and _product_samples_ with the PICSTART package.  That part sounds
> good to me, but, as I am a beginner, I think the seminar may be way over
my
> head...

Richard,

I have a PICSTART programmer here and it works ok, and it accepts standard
Intel-hex format files so it will work with all true PIC assemblers
(including, of course ASPIC).  I don't use it primarily due to it's lack of
command line automation, but I believe it can program fuses from the INTEL
HEX file, it's just that MPALC and MPASM won't let you.

DEMO.ZIP  gives an example of programming the fuses for any PIC from the
hex file (including seting the device ID to the compile date and time).
DEMO.ZIP is the complete source code (writtten in ASPIC) to my pocket logic
analyzer that was a winning entry in the Picstart design contest last year.
You can pick it up from my BBS (which should be local for you) at (604)
597-3479 if you want (schematics and block diagrams are available only to
registered ASPIC users though).

The Parallax programmer seems to require that you use their special
assembler which does not compile real PIC code, but rather some sort of
80xx style pseudo-code cross compiler code which is really difficult to
read if you can actually program a PIC.

BOTH Picstart and the Parallax programmers use non-standard interface
protocols and
user-interferance screens (which is why in real life, I actually use the
Microburner from Baradine in North Van.).

I attended the Microchip seminar last time it was in Vancouver and it
really geared towards beginners to the PIC, but I still found it
interesting. The audience ranged from people who wanted to find out what a
PIC is, to people like myself who have written tens of thousands of lines
of PIC code.

- Don
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