I have received my picstart plus programmer and after 4 hours of swearing I
am ready to send it all back.  The programmer isn't recognized no matter
what I seem to do - here's the sequence of events;

- I have Win95 on a NEC Versa 550 laptop - it has a com1 serial port on the back
- I had MPLAB 3.4 downloaded from the mChip web site and have been using that
- When the picstart arrived I tried it with the MPLAB3.4 and it would not
  recognize the programmer on com1 when I went into the "Options-Programmer
Configuration - com port" selection in MPLAB
- Figuring it was that the version of MPLAB was different than that supplied
  with the programmer, I installed the 3.x MPlab from the four 3 1/2 disks.
- There was no "install.exe" on the disks like the documentatino said - just
  some cryptic icon - anyway, I clicked on that and the installation seemed
  to work fine
- Re-tried the options-programmer config-com port thing and still the same
  answer - does not recognize the programmer
- Manually set up the com port for 19200,8,n,1 and H/W flow control like the
  documentation said (same documentation that pointed me to the non-existent
  .exe install file earlier) - still same problem.
- Shut off the fifo stuff for the com port in windows as mentioned in the docs
  still same problem
- lookl for the comm.drv in the system.ini file - it's the way it should be
- yank the pcmcia card out - which should look like com2 anyway - still same
  problem
- multiple resetting of the picstart plus programmer by disconecting and
  re-connecting the 2.5mm power plug - still same problem.
- re-boot the computer, reset the programmer - same problem

What the hell is going on? Is there something not right with this thing and
Win95?

george c