On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 01:59:15PM -0500, David VanHorn wrote:
> So do it at a higher level.  Send a hex file to a chip on the other side of
> the USB interface, and let it do the pin wiggling, reporting back success or
> failure as appropriate.

Chicken and egg. That's what this is all about. What chip is inexpensive,
easy to obtain, simple to wire, and most importantly does not require yet another 
programmer in order to program it?

I have 18F2550s sitting on my shelf. They would fit the bill fine. But how do
I program them to be a programmer without in fact buying yet another programmer?

Parallel simply did not require any true smarts on the target end. It was
a hacker's dream. Serial required more, but true serial ports did have
the ability to control a couple of modem control pins for input and output.

USB only for slow interfaces is an eventuality. It's too complex to build
something without innate intelligence in it.

As I said before the USB/serial (or possibly USB/parallel) cables represent 
compromises as they are easily obtainable and have more than one purpose. 

So the job becomes how to use such cables as interfaces. However, they do not
have the same level of accessibility as the native ports they replace.

I believe that it's a problem worth figuring out.

BAJ
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