> The real question in today's environment is what to do in the 
> face of the ever disappearing parallel port? My current 
> laptop doesn't have one. Serial ports are marginal from a 
> voltage standpoint and USB to Serial converters makes no 
> guarantees about modem control signals. It's fast getting to 
> the point where one needs a programmable part simply to 
> wiggle some pins.

There is a nice long page of programmers available at 
http://www.piclist.com/techref/microchip/devprogs.htm that might help our
O.P. find a programmer that works for him/her.

But you raise an interesting question in my mind, regarding the fading away
of the parallel port, poor quality serial ports and, most important, the
need for software to "wiggle pins" on the port. Keep in mind, this is in the
context of "bootstrapping" or starting with PIC's for the beginner who likes
to do things for his/her self.

A long time ago, Tony Nixon designed a programmer that would work on even a
low quality serial port (and it has been tested by other people with USB to
serial adapters) without ANY software! And it is very simple:

<http://www.piclist.com/techref/com/picnpoke/www/http/projects/prog.html>
You just jumper the handshaking signals on the serial port so that the data
flys out the end at 1200n7 and supply the programming voltage yourself. 

I really like that the minimum commands required to tell the PIC to load
this data are documented on that page. This removes the "magic" of the PIC
device programmer and allows the true hacker (in the true sense of that
word) to see exactly what is happening.

The trick is that although no software is actually needed, translating the
hex file into the data stream that needs to be sent out the serial port is
something that a program should be used to do, and the only program that has
ever been written to do it is closed source (source lost) and for the
windows environment.

I'm really curious about two things:

A) is there another programmer that is basically the same as this one?
Serial port, a few basic components and no PIC, just taking a datastream and
not a program...

B) does anyone see any value in writing some open source software to
translate hex files into the datastream needed for the programmer?

If someone writes the program, I will try to host it at piclist.com so it
would be a truly host independent programming solution... Just past your hex
file into a form on the web page, push the button, download the result and
copy it out your serial port.

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