I am looking for advice regarding ICSP.  I have breadboarded and hand
solderd point to point a circuit for a datalogger prototype and I am nearly
ready to make a small run of about 10 of them for the company I am working
for.  For this I am going to have PCBs made and to save space and as a
learning experience I am going to use SMDs.  Up until now I have used a
P16PRO that I bought a couple of years ago for a college project and PDIPs
that I programmed out of circuit.

I have tried connecting MCLR,Vdd,Vss,RB7,RB6, and RB3 from the P16PRO to my
breadboard via relatively short (6-8") 20Ga solid wires and get Verify Error
at 0x0 with WinPicProg 1.91.  I also tried disconnecting the rest of the
circuit from the Vdd and Vss and removing the bypass caps on the PIC, and
adding 470ohm series resistors in the RB7,RB6, and MCLR lines as per the
suggestion for the PicStartPlus in the FAQ, as well as varying the delay
settings in WinPicProg to no avail.

Does anyone have any idea of something I may be doing wrong with my current
setup?

The next thing I have turned up in searching the web is olimex's PIC-PG1 or
PG2.  Does anyone have any experience with either of these using ICSP?  I
like the prce but it makes me a little suspicious.

Or does anyone have any other recommendations?

Secondly, I am starting to draw my PCB and want to verify in one place what
I have found searching the internet regarding the circuit requirements for
ICSP since I can't seem to get it working on my breadboard to test first.

MCLR should be tied to Vcc through a ~50k resistor and the input for ICSP
connected to the MCLR pin's node.

I am able to not use RB7,RB6,and RB3 so I can just connect them directly to
the ICSP port, maybe with a ~1M resistor to ground to prevent floating
during normal operation.

As far as Vdd and Vss are concerned, all of the other ICs in my circuit are
powered from I/O pins of the PIC, so the only thing on the supply is the PIC
and some bypass caps (planning on 1uF ceramic on each set of power pins and
maybe a small electrolytic as well).  I have read that the power rise time
can be a problem but I can't pop caps off my PCB every time I program.  Do
you think I'll be ok here?  Does this affect a recommendation for a
programmer?

Does this about cover it, assuming I have a proper programmer?

Thanks - This is my first post but I've learned a lot about PICs and EE in
general from searching and browsing the archives.

Nick Sears

--
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