Bill Kuncicky wrote:
> Fourth, after reading a good deal, it seems clear that building a
> programmer, rather than buying one, is a good idea for a newbie like
> me.  Not for someone who is doing this stuff for a living, of course
> -- but just to further my education as to how all this stuff works.
> It just seems like, to me anyway, that building a programmer and
> getting it to work would be important.   I might be wrong on that
> one, though.

I sell programmers, so this may be biased.  Designing and implementing a
good programmer is not an appropriate newbie project.  There's a lot more to
it (if you want to do it right at least) than might be apparent at first.
And what are you supposed to use to program PICs while developing your own
programmer?

There are some very simple programmer designs out there that use just the
parallel port lines, for example, but these have a host of problems.  There
are OS issues, driver issues, voltage issues, etc.  A newbie could build up
one of these with only moderate electronics knowledge, but you end up with a
crappy programmer.  Real programmers contain their own controllers, and take
a lot more than newbie knowledge to create.

I recommend getting a ICD2.  This can be used as both a programmer and
debugger.  You don't want to be worrying about your tools when everything
else is suspect too.


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