Here is what I do for ICSP connectors on surface mount projects. 1. Lose the ten pin Microengineering Labs style interface. Who needs so many pins? Make an adapter that goes to 5-pin interface. 2. I use a standard pinout for ICSP that goes 5V, MCLR, RB7, RB6, Gnd. That way all my projects use the same connector. 3. Production items don't need ICSP as a rule (in my stuff, anyway) so I use a thru-hole 0.1" connector (a strip of low profile thru-hole IC socket cut to 5 pins length) and just leave it out in production. I can always solder it in later if I have to change a production part, which is rare. 4. Hack adapters for all your programmers to this 5-pin interface. I have one from my Microengineering labs Epic, and also one that works from my Picstart Plus. This theoretically impossible feat is done by adding a small 5V power supply off a 9V battery to run the 5V of the target board. The EPIC and PICSTART have wimpy power supplies and won't run a target board properly. Oh, and my Microchip Apps engineer told me never, never abuse a PICSTART in this heinous manner. 5. Arrange your designs so that the RB7 and RB6 pins run something that won't interfere with programming, so you don't have to disonnect them from the target circuit. I have had luck with switch contact inputs with high impedance pullup resistors, TX outputs for talking to the real world, and other light or disconnected loads. Don't hook up RB7 to a fat red LED and expect it to work. -- Lawrence Lile Anand Dhuru Sent by: pic microcontroller discussion list 01/20/2003 02:56 AM Please respond to pic microcontroller discussion list To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU cc: Subject: Re: ICSP connectors for SMT? This is not a direct response to your query, but a suggestion anyway; you could bring down the number of pins required for the connector, and perhaps save 2 pins on the CPU as well. The pins for programming (clock and data) dont have to be dedicated for the purpose; during actual operation of the PIC, they could perfectly well be serving some other purpose. For example, I have designed a pump controller with a serial output to be connected to the PC; I am using RB6 and RB7 (bit banged) to achieve this. Therefore, the same connector can be used to do ICSP as well. Regards, Anand Dhuru ----- Original Message ----- From: "Josh Koffman" To: Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 11:45 AM Subject: [EE]: ICSP connectors for SMT? > I'm on the verge of designing my first SMT board, but I've hit a > problem. I really don't want to use big ugly 12 pin IDC headers for my > ICSP connections. Seems like they are somewhat large compared to the > rest of the components. Is there a smaller, more compact, and visually > appealing solution anyone else is using? I'd like it to have 12 > connectors, and the plug to insert when running the code (not > programming the chip) shouldn't be too huge. > > Any ideas? > > Josh > -- > A common mistake that people make when trying to design something > completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete > fools. > -Douglas Adams > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different > ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. > -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics