Hello all, from Bill Davis. So my anonymity is blown, people seemed to be very insulted by my hidden name. Call me paranoid, but always better safe than sorry. My easiest path will be if I just give up the idea of safe code. I can throw some road blocks by code protecting certain stable blocks and hiding code with bank specific code protection, but the more code that is code protected the fewer banks that remain that can be flashed, ultimately giving me a chip I need to consider OTP, or do a physical recall and/or chip swap. Beyond that, how difficult is it for someone to, as Alan just suggested, remove the epoxy on the chip and erase the code protct bits to then download all the hex code? Sure, they've got to disasseble it and reverse engineer it, but can they easily get at it? Is removing the epoxy to expose the die a real possibility or just a very difficult to achieve project or outright myth? If one can erase the code protect, than it stands to reason chip recalls with 100% code protect are futile. And best to just use flash for flash and only try and use code protection to dissuade the ambivalent. The determined thief, it appears, can aways expose the die and get at your code by erasing the bits. Is this a real possibility? Shall I surrender to defeat on this and just use flash and leave my code naked?? Thanks... _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.