Does that mean if you "pry" the top off an OTP, you'd see a uv part in the middle? Not that all the wirebonds would hold, but you'd see the UV EPROM, right? -W -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Warren [mailto:fastfwd@IX.NETCOM.COM] Sent: Friday, May 12, 2000 3:57 PM To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: Erasing PIC's johan strombom wrote: > Why is that, why will the pic become useless after code protection, > who would like to do such a thing with a uv erasable pic? I can't > see anything positive with that, if you program it and by an > accident enables the code protection then your expensive pic is > lost... Did Microchip plan that when they constructed the chip? Johan: Yes, Microchip planned it that way. In their older PICs, the copy- protect bit was erasable, which allowed unscrupulous people to defeat the code-protection. The newer PICs shield the code-protection memory cells from UV in order to prevent that. Windowed and non-windowed PICs contain the same silicon, so Microchip can't make "development" versions of the PICs that don't contain that copy-protection feature. -Andy === Andrew Warren - fastfwd@ix.netcom.com === Fast Forward Engineering - San Diego, California === http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/2499