Redwood Shores, 27 november 2006.

I built it using the instructions of Randy at Glitchbuster, and it works
very well. I've tried it with a number of parallel ports (also those of
laptops: the board has its own power supply) and there were no problems (I
know older versions seem to have had problems occasionally, but not that
version). It is a bit expensive in total, though. I'm not sure if you can
use a single 40-pin ZIF socket. I almost always used 18-pin parts. Avoid
using the software from Myke Predko, and switch to a "standard" program.
There are free packages under both linux and windows that support this
El-Cheapo, and those will allow you to program a wider array of parts (I did
program the 16F88 once, but that might have been a fluke, given that people
on this list claim it is impossible).

The 16F628A and 16F877A will not program with the El Cheapo, their non-A
counterparts will, though. The suggestion to change it to do ICSP is a good
one, nowadays that is how I program most of my PICs.

All that said, I disagree with people that say it is a programmer made for
the trashcan (it can program a large number of older parts that more modern
programmers can't) but it might be wise to check out other programmers as
well. From the El Cheapo I switched to a JDM programmer (which worked well,
as I had a compliant serial port) and from there I switched to the PicKit 2,
which currently does everything I want a programmer to do.

Greetings,
Maarten Hofman.
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