I think it is a ICD2 firmware bug (or more kind words --"unimplemented feature"). It can not program a 12F629/675 with internal MCLR and internal RC oscillator and I have to use a PICkit 1 to program the 12F629. Now I have both PICkit 1 and Promate III and I of course like Promate III (US$895) slightly better than PICkit 1 (US$35). ;)- However we use ICD2 to program 16F819 and got no problems at all but we are using 20M or 10Mhz ceramic resonator. ICD2 should program 16F819 and 16F88 without any problem, at least if the chip is not on a board. Take note we are using original ICD2. Where do you get MPLAB 7.30? MPLAB 7.21 is the latest and I will recommend Version 7.20 against 7.21 if you do not need the new features of 7.20. Check your ICD2 clone again to see if it cut corners in some places. Wisp628 should support both chips and it is very easy to build. Xwisp2 v1.70 just released will support Windows/Linux and OS/2. Regards, Xiaofan ----- Original Message ----- From: "PicDude" Newsgroups: gmane.comp.hardware.microcontrollers.pic Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 11:07 AM Subject: [PIC] Running into programming walls Arrrggghhh!!! I'm stumped, and frustrated. So my questions -- if some PIC's require Vdd-before-Vpp, why doesn't the ICD2 control Vdd? Are the 16F819 and 16F88 really Vdd-before-Vpp devices? I've never really read-thru any programming specs before, but maybe I'll check one out. Most importantly is what I can do at this point, and is there really a programmer that properly supports the 16F818 and 16F88? From some research, the F88 should be easy, but I'm not sure why it locked up. The F819 appears to be problematic, but there must be a supported programming HW/SW combo that works for this, right? Cheers, -Neil. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist