> What sort of serial protocol is used ? Is it sustainable with common
> Unix serial drivers, or do you have to do some clever stuff with the
> handshake lines ?

The source for the 16C7X chip in the programmer is also on the BBS.
>From what I have been able to understand from the source, the protocol
is pretty asynchronous (read: hideous amounts of time spent sending
handshake characters in lockstep back and forth instead of using flow
control) and can be implemented with really easy blocking I/O so the
code should be trivial to port. If I have to do funky serial setup
using termios or something, then one camp (BSD or SysV) will be
unhappy.

> A generic serial connection to the programmer sounds a nicer solution
> than porting the parallel-port programmer, since it would be usable with
> all Unixes rather than being Linux-specific. A special device driver
> that only works on PC-Linux seems barely better than a DOS-only utility
> to me.

If I had the choice again, I'd be inclined to get some commercial
serial-based product since kits are annoying. Good thing I got my
brother to put this one together. :-)
The one good thing about this kit is that it does verify at min and
max voltage levels. A definite drawback is that this thing only does the
16C5X series chips.
When I get around to porting the serial routines, it won't be very
Linux specific. I just won't promise it will work on platform XX unless
someone gives a nice XX system. :-)

> Are the protocols that Microchip uses to talk to the Picstart (and
> perhaps other programmers) published anywhere ? It seems to involve
> a lot of handshake-line-waving, but perhaps it's just doing excessive
> flowcontrol - I don't know whether it will work with the accepted
> handshake protocols.
Has someone tried asking for the protocol specs?  It always amazes me
how hardware venders can be so protective about a few API/comm specs
that are absolutely useless without the hardware they sell!

> > If someone has the same kit, I can mail you my version and the originals.
> > DOSEMU works but is less that ideal.
> I don't have the kit. Are the sources copyright / not copyable ?

Everything is copyrighted. Automatically by law. However, there seems
to be no restriction on the distribution. I didn't need to do anything
special to get it from their BBS.
I offered to mail it to people because most people here use the MicroChip
or PICSTART products and couldn't care less about source for PICPROG.EXE

Personally, it would be nice to have a unified set of unix tools with
a back end for each product but that's probably wishful thinking.

arthur