Hi,

I'm having problems with my programmer as well.  I think it's all put
together right and have gone through the circuit a few times, but then found
that my wonderful comp only put out about 7 volts on the RS-232 port hence
not enoph on the MCLR pin.  Hence I rigged up an old PSU from work.  Now I
have a good strong 12.something volts on my MCLR line and a nice 5V as well.

Now I'm using PicProg06, running on Win98 and it reads, erases and Blank
checks the PIC ok, but it wont program it just says Error writing to 0000 and
stops.  So my questions are

How easy is it to blow up a Pic ?

Does the MCLR line have to be switched on and off but the computer ?

Also whats the p16pro40 programmer ?

because I'm realy in nead of a programer that works.  I have the programs
written and simmed,  the circuit built for it to go into but no programs in
my pics.

Thx, Karl