You are  forgetting one very important thing, todays PC (and yesterdays PC
as well) are simply not designed for this purpose, they are designed to use
peripheral equipment, such as programmer HW to communicate on the lower
level. There will never be a good way of controll serial ports, lpt or USB
ports, simply because they are not designed for that purpose.

A PC based on x86 can't do realtime controll, why, because all IO is
DMA-based, it simply takes to much time to flush the cashe and reload it.
Therefore you are better of having some dedicated HW that does the actual
controll and timing.
Once you have an working bootloader and a standard port (RS232, USB....) on
your target then you could use anything to communicate and download what you
want, but to get there you need some dedicated HW-Tools.

I simply can't understand the problem, konnect the programmer, start upp the
SW download and verify your code, cant be simpler, and not very expensive
either. Me myself, I'm using the PicKey from FED, which is a marvelous piece
of equipment.

With best regards

Tomas Larsson
Sweden

Verus Amicus Est Tamquam Alter Idem

> -----Original Message-----
> From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu 
> [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf Of Byron A Jeff
> Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 5:28 PM
> To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
> Subject: Re: [PIC] Cheap programmer interface, was noob's 1st ques
> 
> 
> On Mon, Feb 06, 2006 at 08:05:56AM -0500, Olin Lathrop wrote:
> > Byron A Jeff wrote:
> > > I started this thread. Cheap isn't the sole goal. Part of 
> it is to 
> > > maintain some measure of control of the hardware. If one cannot 
> > > build any type of device that can be directly controlled by the 
> > > user, then that user is now dependent for others to 
> supply hardware 
> > > for them.
> > 
> > I just don't get this.  You buy a PC and are dependent on someone 
> > building the motherboard, programming the bios, etc.
> 
> All are commodity components. You can get them from literally 
> thousands of vendors in a variety of ways and cost options.
> 
> > You probably wouldn't consider
> > building your own soldering iron, and you don't think twice about 
> > being dependent on the manufacturer to program the PIC inside to 
> > regulate the temperature.
> 
> While a PIC is single source, it too is virtually a commodity 
> component because it too is obtainable from a long list of sources.
> 
> > 
> > Think of a PIC programmer as any other tool.  It connects 
> to a PC on 
> > one side and a PIC on the other.  Why does it matter 
> whether the part 
> > inbetween uses only passive parts, a PIC, or relays to get the job 
> > done as long as it works?
> 
> It has always been personal with me on this subject Olin. PIC 
> programmers are not real important in my world view. As such 
> they need to be cheap and commodity. You simply cannot pick 
> one up off the shelf. My Trivial programmer has always been 
> doable with commodity components available from lots of 
> vendors including the local Radio Shack until very recently. 
> So factors such as quick to build and commodity components 
> are important to me.
> 
> >  Like most things, you might be able to build one yourself, but you 
> > can also probably buy one that works cheaply enough.
> 
> Not off the shelf. And each of the other items that you 
> listed above are easily purchased off the shelf.
> 
> >  I don't see why the
> > PIC programmer is being singled out and treated differently 
> that your 
> > other tools,
> 
> It's not a commodity item and it's not important in my 
> development cycle.
> 
> > other than it seems you personally feel you know something 
> about PICs 
> > and therefore just don't like the idea of having someone else take 
> > care of that part for you.  That's certainly your call, but 
> everyone 
> > is going to see this tradeoff differently.
> 
> I agree. That's one reason why I explain my view on it. It's 
> certainly not for everyone. However, just because it's a 
> niche position doesn't mean that it's a position that should 
> be vacated. And with the gradual elimination of parallel and 
> serial ports towards USB, it's a position that would have to 
> be vacated.
> 
> >  What you are asking for is no different from
> > plans for a soldering iron that can be built without requiring a 
> > soldering iron.  Perhaps possible, but silly by many people's 
> > standards.
> 
> True. Actually it's one of the reasons I use wire wrap! ;-)
> 
> BAJ
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