>>Ok, I've done something pretty stupid.
>
>Like, who *hasn't? :=)

True enough. Some more than others though.

>>nothing to worry about. The voltage regulators were getting really hot,
>>which I thought was unusual, so decided to ignore it.
>
>Ignoring the heat was probably not the best move. (I usually don't notice
>that there's heat until smoke appears.)

I only noticed because I was wondering if the regulators got warm, and burnt
my fingers.

>>I put in my 16F84A,
>>and recieved an error message when trying to program it. So I switched it
>>off, removed the PIC

The error messgae, if it helps anyone, is:
Failed at 0000: Expecting 2823, found 3FFF

>>When I looked at my cicuit board I realised that, being an utter muppet,
>>I'd
>>forgotten to cut the copper traces between the pins of the PIC socket. No
>>wonder the regs were hot!
>>Anyway, I corrected the mistake. The software now recognises the hardware,
>>but I'm still getting an error message when trying to program the PIC.
>>Have
>>I fried the chip do you think?
>>
>
>If *all* of the PIC pins were connected together when you tried to program
>it, the PIC would probably have survived. All of the pins would see the
>same
>voltage.

No, just opposite pins were connected, ie. 1 and 18, 2 and 17, etc.

>My next step would be to check the Vdd and Vpp voltage levels. You may have
>fried a regulator or have a mis-wiring.

Unfortunately I don't have a multimeter. Yeah, I know, how do I work without
one? Well, so far I managed to get by without... Its next on my shopping
list though, along with a new PIC...


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