Scott Shidel... wrote:

> I have the ME Labs board and I am more than happy with it.  They sell it
> un assmbled(just the board and softare) for like 27 dollars, which I felt
> was reasonable.  Be aware though that if you donot have a decent
> electronics supply house around, it uses a 7407 TTL chip that I found to
> be a total pain to locate.  Closest one I could find was 50 miles away
> until I found out my boss had some..So if you decide to go with the kit,
> see if you can get the 7407 from ME labs while you're at it.  I kinda
> preferred the kit since I was able to get a ZIF equipped board for the
> same price as the assembled version with a non ZIF socket.
> It seems to work fine. Has read, write, windows based, etc.

While their products usually work OK, I have found MEL to be unresponsive to
my problems in the past.  Others have not had my experience, but I would
hesitate to buy from them again.

Also be aware that their Windows-based software doesn't program all the chips
that their DOS-based software does -- or at least that was the case a few weeks
ago.  If you buy the Windows-based S/W it will cost you an (admittedly
modest) upgrade fee to program some PIC's later.

Octavio's programmer (mentioned in an earlier post) looks like a good choice.
He *is* responsive and seems to have all of his faculties.  Which is something
that you cannot say about some of the folks pushing their products on this
list.  <VBG>

A word to the wise...

Michael

PS.
I am looking at:
        http://www.gbar.dtu.dk/~c888600/newpic.htm
for a project for some college-level classes.  It does PIC12C5XX, 12C67X,
24CXX, 16C55X, 16C61, 16C62X, 16C71, 16C71X, 16C8X, 16F8X and will do ISP as
well.  I haven't actually made one and used it, so my recommendation (yeah or
nay) must be reserved till then.

* TAKE THE '.NOSPAM' OUT OF MY ADDRESS TO REPLY
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