Does someone know the common problems & solutions for the COM84
programmer? My attempts to program PIC16F84 with COM84 has been
very unsuccesful.

I build my COM84 with instructions found from
http://hobbes.king.ac.uk/matt/pic/prog.html. Is that circuit ok? When I
write something with pip02 program (I use com84.exe driver, does it work
with 16F84) I get programming error. Reading the chip always tells me 3f
ff stuff.

Even that the circuit is very simple, I tried it again: I asked my friend
to make the COM84, we used a fresh PIC and his computer. Nada, same
symptoms.

But I think that there is something strange going on, because while
programming, my multimeter shows only about 5-6V as the voltage of MCLR.
As far as I know, it can't be right? It should be higher? Is the problem
too low voltage, possibly caused by lame serial ports? (but if it's so,
lame RS ports are very common; I have tried two different mother board
integrated and one separate adapter card) Or is MCLR switched on/off
during write procedure?

Please, can you tell me what is going wrong?

/Taiska (novadays known as Desperado :(