I built a Tait-style programmer, which is pretty close to the 
simplest possible way I can think of to program a PIC, without
much (hardwarily) to go wrong.  It successfully programs a bunch
of PIC samples I got (16F627/8), but will not program another bunch
of samples (16F777, 16F870, etc).

One thing that made me suspicious is that all the ones which work
came from the same shipment of samples, and all the ones that fail
came from another shipment.  Maybe I got a bad set of samples.  But
after reordering the "bad" ones, I get the same failures on the new
parts.

As far as I can tell, the programmer's working fine.  It succeeds and
fails the same whether driven by PICALL on Windows or my own programmer
code on Unix.

So... either there's something fundamentally weird about the programmer
or I have two sets of bad samples.  I find the latter a little hard to
believe, but before I go out and just buy a commercial programmer, what
kind of quality history have you found with Microchip's samples?  Have
they been really good, or would it be worth it for me to purchase a
couple of PICs from another vendor and try them? 

-- 
Steve Willoughby     | "It is our choices... that show what we truly 
<steve@alchemy.com>  | are, far more than our abilities."
                     |     --Albus Dumbledore, in Harry Potter and the 
                     |            Chamber of Secrets, by J. K. Rowling



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