At 07:43 AM 1/21/97 -0600, you wrote:
>David,
>
>I tried you suggestion and it worked perfectly.  To recap for others: If
>you are using MPASM and want to program your PIC with the Micro
>Engieeering Labs EPIC programmer & software you must explicitly set the
>configuration bits.  For my app. this was:
>
>__CONFIG   _CP_OFF&_XT_OSC&_PWRTE_ON&_WDT_OFF
>
>With an appropriate line like above in the code, the MEL EPIC software
>does fine. You do however have to manually choose the processor type ( a
>single click ) before programming (see below).
>
>With your explanation of the HEX code I was able to do some empirical <g>
>testing and found that the word at 0x2008 sets the EPIC programming
>software to default to a processor type.  The 1 made it default to an
>"84".  By addng the
>
>      org  0x2008
>      data 1
>
>lines, it made the programmer default just as if you had used code
>assembled by their assembler.  I found that adding the org and data lines
>were not necessary if you manually choose the processor type on their
>software's screen so since I don't understand any possible consequences of
>a word at that address, I prefer (for now) to just manually choose the
>processor type.  Is there any reason NOT to have the lines of code above?
>
>Thanks very much to Mr. Tait for the excellent help!  Saved me a lot of
>time.
>
>Scott
>

Scott,

I was off the PICLIST and missed your orginal question. It seems to me the
EPIC programmer is compatible with the parallax pasm and pasmx assemblers.
These are the only assemblers (plus parallax's spasm) I know of that allow
the device to be specified in the source code.

There is a reason NOT to have the above lines you refered to. It is
compatibility. Way less than half of the available programmers will
understand the extra lines.

However, if there is no chance your HEX code will be used on a different
programmer, I would suggest you take advantage of this nice feature and use
it.

Jim