Hi Luca,

You can get MPLAB off the net from Microchip, there are some "Microchip
bashers" out there, just weigh up short term cost of hobby type
programmer against Microchip's Picstart Plus (most upgrades for both
hardware and software free).

I initially made a programmer some three years ago based on a microchip
application note plus my own qbasic program, how ever if you look at the
large (and expanding) microcontroler product range that Microchip have
then you may consider getting the official package ie programmer,
cd-rom, MPLAB, databooks, support. I eventually decided to bite the
bullet and get this as otherwise I was wasting time updating my
downloader instead of new pic varieties.

>From past traffic, the David Tait programmer would seem the best
supported near free alternative option.

regards,
Graham Daniel

Luca Favaro wrote:
>
> Hi, I need some help from all of you PIC expert!
>
> I've been reading a lot of stuff on the Internet about the PIC processor
> and I think now I'm (almost) ready to start building some project,
> though there are still some basic concepts that I still don't
> understand.
> First of all I want to build my own programmer, unfortunately on the
> Internet there are too many design and I can't make up my mind. I'm now
> oriented to build the "programmer 2" shown in this site:
> http://www.ebar.dtu.dk/~c888600/newpic.htm
> Does anybody have tried it? Any comments?
>
> I'm planning to build some project using PIC 16CXXX but also the
> 12CXX... by the way, why there is no mention on the latter one on the
> FAQ? is it out of production?
>
> I'm planning to use assembler to program the PIC but again there are too
> many options out there! I would like to use some freeware pakage.... do
> you have any suggestion?
> As far as loading the software onto the PIC, I'm assuming that there is
> a thight relationship between the programmer board and and the
> programmer software. Which downloader shoud I use?
>
> And now I need some more help on choosing the PIC... I see there is only
> one model that is EEPROM (the 16C84), all the other are EPROM which I
> assume need to be UV erased. What do PIC hobbist normally use? if I
> remember right it takes quite a while to erase an EPROM and also the
> number of  times it can be erased is very limited... am I right?
>
>  To summarize... I would like to work on some very simple project using
> the PIC processsor but I'm kind of afraid because I don't know where to
> start....
>
> Thanks for your time... sorry for the XXL e-mail
>
> Luca