The reason why the homebrew ICD1 was possible is that the schematic was
available in the manual, and later MPLAB updates included the hex file
with the firmware for it.

The fact that it was a fairly simple device helped quite a bit as well.

However, the new ICD2 doesn't have the schematic, there is no known
firmware update, and, IIRC, the main chip is not even produced by Microchip.

Even if we did have the schematic and firmware, many who would want to
build it would not have the resources to program the other chip.

The firmware would be helpful for reverse engineering the programming,
and handing a spec off to other programmers to duplicate the
functionality in a clean-room (legal reverse engineering) transition.

So, in short, it's unlikely that a homebrew ICD2 will come out in the
next year.

Digikey sells one for $156, which isn't too bad (it's what I paide for
my Picstart+ years ago), but, just as when I made an ICD to save money,
I can certianly see a reason to try and make your own.

However, I'll bet that more effort will go into full-featured
bootloaders than an ICD2 clone.  Bootloaders require much less hardware,
time and money.

-Adam

Thomas N wrote:

>Hi everyone,
>
>I successfully built the MPLAB ICD 1, thanks to piclist!  Has anyone had
>any success building the ICD 2?  I want to experiment with the PIC18
>series.
>
>Thanks!
>Thomas
>
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