Several weeks ago I tried to make the El Cheapo to work and got on this list
several suggestions.

Here is a quick follow-up:

Eventually I could make El Cheapo to work but it was extremely unreliable.
It could complete a 16F84 programming only once in 20 or so tries. I tried a
bunch of suggestions but nothing fix the problem.

Few days ago I ordered a P16PRO40 (14$ kit, 18$ assembled) and it works just
great (I am using the free software ic-prog). This is a very straight
forward design that interfaces properly with the parallel port signals and
does not suffer from the El Cheapo sensitivity to parallel port variations.

Bottom line is, 'cheaper' is not always better. Sometimes saving a 50c chip
may be pretty expensive.

Tal

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic:
[PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads