I just recently got interested in pic chips. Actually I investigated the
Stamp to begin. The reason was for a project I have currently developed and
want to reduce a 12 chip circuit to a 4 chip circuit. I have been
'monitoring' this group to get ideas.  This is the first time I have spoken
up.  The reason is that an ISD 2560 is the heart of the project.  I didn't
want to spend the $1000 or so to purchase the programmer so I, with a Visual
Basic guy at work, developed my own unit. Now it only does one chip, runs off
the parallel port, connects to my sound card and is easy to use. I have ,on
the bench and partially wired ,a unit to program 8 units at a time.  It
addresses 10 areas of the chip with 10 different 6 second 'messages'.  The
'player' which is my product, then plays the 'messages' in order at 30 second
intervals.
Regards, Bill