A> I've been borrowing a programer for a while (manufactured by micro chip I
A> think)
A> but will have to return it to the owner soon and was wondering if anybody
A> knows of a serial programer diagram that would work with micro chip or other
A> common software not a cheap minimal component design (i.e. com84), but with
A> max232 or similar to ensure computability.

all PIC programers I'm aware of are listed at
http://people.frankfurt.netsurf.de/wky/pic.htm#table3

Regards,
Wolfgang