When I first started with PICs about 4 months ago, I also built a NoPPP as it seemed so much simpler, and I did not have a 7407 (f/the popular Tait programmer) laying around. But it did not work. I tried some mild debugging, to no avail, but then just went for the Tait, which worked very well. The 7407 and the transistors are about $1 (total), and a one-chip programmer should not be a concern for someone who intends to get into microcontrollers. For the same reasoning, I'd recommend picking up the PIC16F84 even though you're about to be flooded with emails preaching the extra functionality and lower cost of its predecessor, the PIC16F628. Yes, it does more, and yes, it costs less, and yes, the 16F84 is obsolete, so you can't even get it in some places anymore. But for your first circuit or 2, use the chip that comes with gobs and gobs of support all over the web. Now I'll go put on the armor and wait for the 16F628 advocates to wake up... :-) Cheers, -Neil. -----Original Message----- From: pic microcontroller discussion list [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Jay Jacobs Sent: Saturday, July 13, 2002 12:58 AM To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: [PIC] noppp for 16F84 First time poster, short-to-mid time reader and geez you guys sure talk a lot! After careful consideration and trying to stretch the pennies I've gathered, I decided to build the noppp programmer and pick up a few 16F84's to learn on. I built the noppp circuit on a bread board, just to see if it worked well enough for me to solder it together and box it up proper. The problem: noppp.exe (run under win98 in dos window) won't see the circuit. becuase it said that may happen, I tried to program, but it won't program the pic. saying "Failed at 0000: Expecting 3000, found 3FFF." What I did: Verified and reverified my parts and placements (I'm doing "version 2" of the noppp schematic). I'm using the 1N34 diodes (not the alternatives). I've run through the noppp "Test" suite in the software and everything came out perfectly within spec. I'm using a weird ribbon cable/db25 cable running to a db25 connector I hand soldered, these are probably the first things I'd replace if I didn't have piclist to run to. The cable is a flat ribbon cable and is almost 3' long on one side and about 8" on the other (three connectors like an IDE cable, but db25). I tried both ends (noppp connected to middle connector in both) My big questions: Would the noppp tests return the right values in the tests if the cable or parrallel port weren't working at all? (just a realty check) Could I have fried the pic by leaving it in the circuit while powering it up the first time? Is is bad to just leave it in there? (I took it out to test and to see if following directions would help programming it) What steps should I take next? while I'm at it, How can I get an extra few hours in my day to play with this stuff? I'm using a pentium 266 runing win98, it's got two db25 ports on the back, I'm not sure which is which, but one is male and one is female, which is normally the parallel port? (female by com port, male on a card by ps2 mouse port -- I've been using the female becuase it's the only cable I had.) Other then that, I'm just trying to load up the bincnt.asm application from cheapic to see if I can make some LED's flash, so there shouldn't be anything funny about that, and I use mplab's IDE to turn it into hex. As far as I can tell, it's either the parallel port and I could drag out a printer to see if that's working, or it's the cable. Other slim possibilites are bad db25 connector or a bad pic, but it's fresh from jameco on thursday. Thanks for the help, Jay Jacobs -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.