I notice that Daniel Chester is programming sucessfully from his parallel
port over a long length of cable.  This doesn't mean that every PC will do
so.  A lot depends on the characteristics of the PC's port.  Funnily enough,
the older the PC's I/O the better it is likely to work for PIC programming.
See some relevant info on David Tait's pages at
http://www.man.ac.uk/~mbhstdj/maplin.html with some follow-up and suggested
further reading linked from there.  I made a Maplin kit which worked fine on
every PC but mine - guess which one had the "best" I/O card?  I think Steve
Nolan's suggestion to limit cable length is probably a good one.

Tim Forcer            Tel: (+44) (0)1703 593362
                      Fax: (+44) (0)1703 592053
                    email:  tmf@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Department of Electronics & Computer Science
Room 3005, Building 35
The University, Southampton, SO17 1BJ     UK