Does the parallel port guarantee the minimum voltage
for programming a PIC,12.5v? 

john

--- Maarten Hofman <cashimor@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I am also new to PICs. I have been using those for
> only a month with
> > little prior experience with electrical
> engineering. I started by
> > building my own programmer using a PCB found in a
> book ("El Cheapo"
> > programmer).
> >
> > Using this home made programmer, I realized that
> it was difficult to
> > program a 16f84a and
> > it had the type of problems you are experiencing
> where I got all kind
> > of errors trying first to talk to the parallel
> ports as specific
> > drivers are needed and then I had to try to power
> and connect the
> > programmer in different order. With great
> difficulty, I was able to
> > make it work on Linux and Windows.
> 
> 
> Note that Myke Predko (who designed the El Cheapo)'s
> website has many
> updates to the design found in the book (after the
> book was released many
> parallel ports changed in design, using lower
> voltages, and therefore
> certain changes were necessary). I build it
> according to the latest version
> (http://www.glitchbuster.com was kind enough to
> explain how to modify the
> PCB to fit a newer version) and had no real problems
> hardware wise. Myke's
> software is a bit outdated, but fortunately most
> software that currently
> exists has good support for the El Cheapo, which
> means you can use it to
> program a wide variety of PICs. The 16F628A,
> however, is not one of them (I
> was able to program the 16F628, the 16F877 and the
> 16F88, though). The El
> Cheapo also has some strengths compared to most
> other programmers: it has a
> very solid programming voltage supply, which means
> that it can program most
> C parts (OTP), which current programmers can't
> handle.
> 
> I would still recommend the PICkit 2 over the El
> Cheapo and the JDM
> programmers you can get on eBay, but this doesn't
> mean the El Cheapo or the
> JDM are "crap". In fact, if you have the PCB, it
> gives you a very good
> starting point for the PICmicro. And even if it is
> useless otherwise, you
> could still use the El Cheapo to create a
> bootloading 16F877, or program a
> 16F628 for the Wisp (I have never built a wisp, but
> from what I read on the
> list, you need a programmed 16F628/16F628A/16F648A
> for it).
> 
> Greetings,
> Maarten Hofman.
> -- 
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