Yo,

Had nearly the same problem with my new PSP last week. Mine was only
being recognized by MPLab sporadically.

After hours spent screwing with the bios and system settings, I decided
to try something else.  I downloaded firmware version 1.50 from
Microchip's ftp site <ftp://www.microchip.com> and burned it into a 17C44
using the same PSP and a different computer running Windows 3.1 and an
older version of MPLab (don't remember the version number).  I installed
the '44 into the PSP, put MPLab 3.4 on the Windows 95 computer, and was
running reliably.

Incidentally, the PSP originally came with firmware version 1.19, and the
floppy-disks of MPLab were not the most recent version.  Kinda lame.

Hope this helps - I know I was ready to throw the thing at the wall and
play the 'hammer my new programmer really hard' game for a bit.

Jason

Kool 'n Groovy george cobb Tried To Tell Me...

>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
>