Alex,

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 09:11:31 -0000, Alex Rogers wrote:

> Please can anyone help?  I want to get back into Pic programming after a
> couple of years doing other things.  I got my pic programmer our of the loft
> and have tried to get it working.  In the meantime, of course, I know have a
> different PC and I've lost the software to program with.
> 
> Does anyone recognise my programmer?  It is called a Pic Tutor v2.   I have
> put a picture of it at www.smartcti.com/pictutor.jpg . Can anyone help?  I
> have tried Tait (using 'quick and dirty style') and a couple of other
> programmers but still can't work it out.

I don't know where you got the "v2" from - it's a PIC Tutor! :-)  It was one of John Becker's designs, 
published in Everyday Practical Electronics (EPE) in about 1998.  As you have found out, Magenta produced the 
kits - they still have them in their current advert in EPE, incidentally!  It went with a series of articles 
(PIC Tutorial), however there was a second Tutorial series in 2003, and the "Toolkit" series of hardware 
appeared to go with it (it got as far as v3), which handles 8, 18, 28 and 40-pin PICs.

> When I fired it up, I still had my 16F84 with a program on it which worked
> (lights blinked, etc.)  I have now managed to 'blank' the chip so it doesn't
> do anything!  I have tried a new chip, a 16F84A, but still no good.

The programming part of the Tutor board is a Tait-style parallel port programmer, so you'll need software that 
is able to handle that - what you have is probably too old and doesn't know about the -A version of the '84.  
Have a look at the EPE web site.  To be honest, it's well out of date now, and in my opinion you need to think 
about something more up to date, although EPE do have an online chat forum where you could ask for help.

As an aside, I hate the names they used for these things!  My mind works on initial letters for some reason, 
and I find it really hard to remember which is which of the Tutor, Toolkit, the magazines's 2 Tutorial series, 
and the Tutorial software that they sell, not to mention the Teach-in!  :-)  I once stopped reading a novel 
after a few pages because the author had used the same initial (D) for every character's name, and I just 
couldn't follow it at all...

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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