Stef Mientki wrote:
> Interesting to see that I've chosen
> the opposite approach:
> the PC-program is very general and doesn't contain any intelligence,
> all the intelligence (as far as possible) is put in the PIC that
> controls the programmer.

You are either going to need a very big PIC to hold all the programming
algorithms and higher level information, or your programmer is going to be
ghastly slow.  There is a lot of PIC-specific data that has to be kept
somewhere, let alone acted upon.

For example, my data file that defines the particulars of every PIC I
support is over 4000 lines long and nearly 100Kbytes in size.  Of course
that's verbose text since a few 100Kbytes don't matter compared to clarity
and maintainability.  I ran it thru WinZip and it reduced to 4Kbytes.  Even
that is probably more than necessary if a tight data structure were designed
just for the purpose.  However it gives some feel for the volume of data
required.

> The reason for that is quit simple,
> as most pic users are not very experienced with writing  / modifying
> PC programs,
> and a I wanted every PIC user to be fully able to implement whatever
> programming algorithm (s)he wants.

Most PIC users don't know from programming algorithms and don't really want
to deal with them.  Even for those that do, the existence of higher level
logic on the PC doesn't proclude them from implementing their own
algorithms.

> So based on the above experience, I simply try all plausible
> datawords,
> until the chip is fully erased.

And how long does it take if it starts out with 0, goes up sequentially, and
3FFFh is eventually found to be the right answer?


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