Another newbie disappointment story with the El Cheapo: Last week, I spent the majority of my free time fiddling with an El Cheapo after purchasing Myke's very good book. (I have no complaints with the book. The diagrams in many cases are exact duplicates of the PIC datasheets, but newbies usually don't download datasheets to look at, and the PIC is a relatively simple architecture, so there's not much else Myke could do there... and having the textual description to UNDERSTAND those diagrams is worth a million...) My background: Simple electronics, lots of RF stuff, and LOTS of computer programming and system administration experience. I remember soldering 16K of extra RAM into my first "PC" (it wasn't an IBM, that's for sure!) years ago... so no newbie to a soldering iron or scared of messing with components. I decided (like many newbies, I assume) that I wanted to delve deeper into uController hardware and since I have two friends, one who's a PIC guy, the other who swears by Atmel's, I realized that NOW -- while I know them, we all talk regularly and all that -- is a great time for me to do dumb things and ask questions with both micro's. I'm not afraid to "let the smoke out" of some components to learn something... and have done it before. Might as well give those guys a laugh or two when I call with dumb questions about "why did it blow up when I did X?" (GRIN) My El Cheapo, when completed, (checked over carefully by myself and a friend who's been designing PIC controller applications for about five years now, some hobby, some professional contract stuff) is extremely input voltage sensitive. The tests in the older version of the software on the CD regularly report that the delay line either "didn't return a HI voltage value" or "didn't return a LOW voltage value" correctly. The only clue from that version of the software is to "check the polarity of XYZ"... yep, been checked. It's correct. Verified by a third-party looking at my board. Grabbed a VOM and went through the circuit. Reheated anything that even so much as LOOKED like the solder wasn't "just right"... The error always follows the amount of voltage provided the programmer, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I'm no designer... if I input too low a voltage the test software screams that the voltage returned from programmer's delay line isn't high enough, if a higher voltage is provided it screams that the low voltage swing isn't present. Looking at it with a VOM, it's swinging alright... or at least it seems to be swinging according to the little help screens in the older software to the level ranges indicated. Of course, one major hurdle here is that in the older software, the board layout's the same, but there are typos in the software. It keeps referring to part numbers that simply don't exist on the newer board. I can't think of the reference right now, but the circle around the component and the component silkscreened name in the picture on the software don't match the component name on the board, but the locations match and the layout looks the same. Sigh... couldn't the CD with the book actually match the board in the front cover? We tried it on three different PC's and a total of four parallel ports. One parallel port was even an ISA add-on card, "dedicated to the programmer" as some of Myke's instructions I've seen have seemed to recommend. That seemed to help some but not much. The original cable was a 10-foot-long one, and reading some other posts we saw that might be a problem (gee, all my other parallel devices do fine at 10'... surprise surprise!) so we found a 3-footer. We also pin-checked the entire cable as requested by the site. All a waste of time. Our other disappointment is that NEITHER I nor the other person who was looking over my shoulder (we both work in computers and networking for a living and I have for over 10 years now) could get the latest version of the software to install properly after downloading it from the website. All instructions were followed, the requirements for Admin priveledges on the one Win2K machine of the bunch (there were three machines tried) were done, the VB Runtimes and all that rot... the new software on ALL THREE 2machines complains after installation about "path not found". This is just unacceptable software packaging, in my opinion... (But hey, what do I know about software products, I remember soldering RAM into early PC's and all and know a myriad of OS's long since dead and most of the "latest-and-greatest" ones...) The Win2K box complains (as the docs mention) about some system software being out of date, and even after following the step-by-step instructions for dealing with this issue on Myke's site... it consistently does this every time. Various other "hey I've got an idea" moments and trials occurred over the course of many hours also... just to get a VB app to load?! No wonder I'm a Linux bigot! (GRIN) Man I was mad. (Rarely do my computers "beat" me at their games... BIG GRIN. I even considered finding a bootleg copy of the VB development environment to install before Myke's software to try to get the VB crap-ola straightened out, but decided that this silly little programmer wasn't worth that much effort.) So I put together a Tait programmer on an experimenter breadboard and it works. It's crappy and built on a breadboard with leads running over to the PC, etc... looks like hell. But it works. Had other difficulties finding a machine to put DOS/Windows on out here in the garage... (I really gotta try the Unix tools... I got plenty of Linux boxes around, and would happily even load a BSD or two to try... heh heh.) ... but that's just me. I'm typing this on an iMac running Debian Linux, from the garage on the wireless ethernet... (GRIN). However, my experience with Myke's El Cheapo was REALLY bad. Not so much that I wouldn't recommend the book, but it wasted a HUGE amount of my time unnecessarily, made me angry, and in general... wasn't what I got into this for... a bit of fun. Get an F84 and make up a Tait programmer if you want to go super-duper-cheap... really. If Myke's board doesn't work first or second try, chuck it on the workbench (or in the trash, but we're all good little pack-rats here, right?) put on your thinking cap and build something else... or order a "commercial" programmer from one of the fine folks here on this list. I really am disappointed. Maybe more at my inability to fix this silly thing than at Myke. Especially after spending a week probing around in the FAQ's, archives, and other places... and finding a MYRIAD of good ways to program these little beasties. The El Cheapo is living up to its name, thus far. Basically if you're a newbie reading the list, I'm not trying to be down on Myke's book. The book's good. Very good. Buy the book. GOOD STUFF(TM). But don't get too excited when you see a PCB in the front cover. It's not a very good programmer *in my newbie opinion* and if you're like me, you'll be all excited about seeing that PCB... "Hey! That's going to save me some time/effort/money/whatever"... take your pick. It didn't work out that way for me. It might for you. Hearing that Myke is non-responsive to another poster's e-mails was a surprise this evening when reading posts here. That is *NOT* the spirit I've seen here on the list so far. Admitedly, I haven't tried to contact Myke. I figured (especially with another programmer working) that it wasn't worth bothering him. But after reading the other poster's frustrated comments, I thought I'd say something as a newbie. In three months, I may look back on this e-mail and laugh, knowing that I found something wrong with my El Cheapo that was 100% my fault (highly likely, but how can I tell? There's no reasonable troubleshooting doc for it, and I can't get the latest software even loaded past the crappy interdependencies and DLL hell of the MicroSloth Operating System, and I'm clueless... I will ADMIT it freely.) I didn't bother even trying to contact Myke, as I figured with thousands of books out there and probably thousands of people with "strange" problems with the software and hardware... why bother... just buy or build something that works... don't bother Myke. The book is worth $45 by itself. There's plenty of designs for free programmers. The $20 I spent locally on components was high (our local shop gets a huge premium for having things "in-stock" and if I'd have gone mail-order with shipping it would have been $12 US, but I'm a typical impatient newbie!), and I'd prefer to have put that $20 towards an EPIC or more likely, a Warp-13 programmer now... but blowing a few bucks in the learning process is definitely expected... How many PIC's and other components will I blow up learning? Probably more than that $20 worth of parts, eventually... and I can always pull that stuff off that board and use it for other things... But I *did* waste at least three days or four futzing around with the El Cheapo, and that will give me pause whenever I see a PCB in the front cover of a book at the bookstore ever again. I'd have gladly paid $10-$30 US more for the book and more parts for the El Cheapo if it had "just worked"... I've spent much more money on much smaller and less useful computer books, that's for sure. (Hell, I'm part of a team of people that survey's bookstores for O'Reilly and Associates and gets free books from them just because I couldn't afford my computer book habit and a couple hours in a bookstore a month for a free book is a god-send for a computer bookworm like me!) The $45 (roughly, online outlets were lower -- again, that newbie impatience! HEY... the local Borders has a copy! And with shipping... heck, it's only costing me $5 more to get it from the bookstore TODAY! GRIN...) price tag on the book and the PCB included were a big sales draw to me, and of course, now I know better... Caveat Emptor. Nate (Eagerly reading and absorbing all this wonderful "PIC Stuff". Imagine! A "computer" as powerful -- well, less RAM, and er, um... a slightly less "user friendly" interface to the outside world... heh heh -- as my first PC on a 16 pin CHIP! WHOOO HOOO! Gonna have some *FUN* now!) On Mon, 2002-08-26 at 20:16, Charles Rogers wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Scott Pierce" > To: > Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2002 7:54 PM > Subject: [PIC]:Newbie's first attempt > > > > Hi all, > > > > I finally got my PIC programmer (El Cheapo) working so I thought I would > > Scott: > > You may think your El Cheapo is working, maby it is, maby it's not!!! I > built and re-built an > El Cheapo, it passes "ALL" the specified tests in the build/test section, > programms and verifies > just like Myke says it should but the simple fact is "It just don't work". > You should verify it with > a working programmer to make sure. This newbie has been through every thing > you describe, > so think about the El Cheapo!!! I sent Myke eight (8) different e-mails > concerning the > El Cheapo and have yet to receive my first reply! I built somebody's KIT81, > a P16Pro and > invested in a PS+ and all work very well, just like to tinker I guess. > > Charlie R. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.