I am a PIC neophyte, trying to put together the AN589 programmer Microchip
tells you about. And it seems to not be working. Specifically, transistor
Q3, the one that is supposed to pull \bar {MCLR} down, keeps burning out.
Specifically, it's OK while D4/pin 6 is low; \bar {MCLR} is at
programming voltage. Then I pull D4 high, which is supposed to pull \bar
MCLR low, but \bar MCLR goes to about 11 volts, and transistor Q3 starts
to overheat and occasionally smokes. (Well, each _individual_ transistor
smokes only once, then I replace it, and its replacement smokes too).

I see two possibilities:

1) It's my as-of-yet unregulated power supply. It's at 15 volts, and can
go up to an amp (according to specs), so is that burning the transistor? I
was going to take care of this before plugging in a PIC, but will that
solve this problem too? And is the solution in the form of an LM317
regulator?

2) possibility 2; there's a bug in AN589 that no one has told me about.
Anyone else had this problem?

Andrius Tamulis