I myself have taken a look at the information on the "Free ICD" page
and also the ICD schematic in the MChip ICD documentation.

I notice from some of the comments on the "Freer ICD" page that there
are some concerns with the VPP charge pump either causing too much
noise or problems encountered bypassing the VPP charge pump with
an external 13V supply.

Upon examining the schematic, it appears that it has been updated since
its release. The power supply for the so-called charge pump appears
to be a simple boost switcher followed by a 78L12.

If I build *exactly* from the published schematic in the current 51184d.pdf
will there be any concerns for me?

After successfully building the JTAG cable for the Xilinx parts, I'm all pumped
up to build my own ICD and dump my old home brew programmer.

TIA,

Dan

On Fri, 8 Dec 2000 12:07:48 -0000, Michael Rigby-Jones wrote:

>Yes you can build your own.  The debugger does have a PIC, but Microchip
>kindly (unintentionaly?) provided a way to program your own by supplying the
>hex code with MPLAB.  If you read through the links James provided at
>
>See the FREE IDC documentation on the piclist.com site
>http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist/freeicd/
>and also
>http://www.piclist.com/techref/microchip/icd.htm
>
>then this explains pretty much all you need to know.  Unless you have all
>the bits lying around and/or are very keen to build your own for the fun of
>it, then buying the genuine article is a better bet.
>

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