I think I heard those thing among people using JDMs. JDMs are cheap though. Wisp628 is slightly more expensive but will still take one day to build. JDM or similar can be used to bootstrap the Wisp628. Wisp628 is much more reliable. I do not want to get into wars of programmer though. So please ignore this if you still prefer to use JDMs. I have played with PonyProg in year 2002 to program some EEPROMs and found out it could also program AVRs and PICs. However I since found it not as good as those intelligent programmers with MCU inside. My guess is that Vpp are not really controlled in most JDM units and it will "soft-destroy" the internal IC but the chip will recover after sometime. But this is only a guess. If this is correct, I will guess Neil's ICD2 clone does not properly regulate Vpp. The original ICD2 is using a boost converter with a digital poti to control the output voltage (Vpp) and the digital poti is not cheap. So most of the cheaper clones will try to avoid it. Most of the cheaper clones will probably avoid the boost converter as well. Microchip will probably not release ICD2 schematics to the public but it only takes some time to draw the schematics if one got the official ICD2. ICd2 should be able to control the sequence of Vdd and Vpp. That is why I think it is rather a software bug. Still I could be wrong. ICd2 debugging feature is nice to have. This is the thing Microchip is not doing too well to the open source communuity. I've raised the question in the Microchip forum but the moderators choose to ignore. http://forum.microchip.com/tm.asp?m=110321 I may want to ask their higher level VPs later. Maybe send an email to the CEO. Just kidding. ;)- It is not so easy for big companies to support Linux because of the supporting issues. Regards, Xiaofan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stef Mientki" Newsgroups: gmane.comp.hardware.microcontrollers.pic Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 4:20 PM Subject: Re: [PIC] Running into programming walls Try it tomorrow again ! I've seen this kind of behaviour with JDM programmer and 16F628, after reprogramming it for about 10 or 20 times within a few hours, I had to wait one day to get access to these PICs again. But I guess I'm about the only one in the whole world who has seen this fantastic phenomena ;-) Stef Mientki ----- Original Message ----- From: "PicDude" Newsgroups: gmane.comp.hardware.microcontrollers.pic Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 4:04 PM Subject: Re: [PIC] Running into programming walls On Sunday 11 September 2005 01:48 am, Chen Xiao Fan scribbled: > 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). ;)- I can program 12F629/12F675's easily with a homebuilt Tait parallel programmer (<$10) and Odyssey on Linux (my preferred environment). > 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. I just got and am still evaluating this clone, which claims to be fully ICD2 compatible. I went with the ICD2 since it is supposed to support a wide range of PICs, and I would really like to start using the debugging feature, even if it means I have to install a Windows OS for now. Are Microchip's schematics for the ICD2 public anywhere? I had seen the original ICD schematics somewhere in the past, but not the ICD2. BTW, does your ICD control the Vdd line? I don't know why, but I find that rather unusual that it does not. Cheers, -Neil. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist