Hans de Vries wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> When I keep receiving programming errors from my Picstart Plus, does
> this mean my PIC16c84 is toast? (could be, it has given out smoke
> signals several times) The weird thing is, it has happened to two of
> them at almost the same time.
>
> Hans

 I started having this problem on a notebook I was using to program.
This notebook was also developing power supply difficulties at the same
time as the programmer started to fail.  I imagine that the poor old
computer was giving out bad signals.

I switched to another notebook and all is well ever since.  I've seen no
more stopping in the middle of writing to a PIC.

Hope this helps in your case.
Carey