Good for you, as for my experience with the El cheapo
was not good. I used the PCB from the book and tried
all sort of methods to get it working and failed. I do
believe there are other ways to get it working but not
from the author's site.... I am a bit harsh since I
had to invest on PIC Start+ to get started with MCU
development at a hobbiest level. That was before I
discovered there were other variants from Olin and
Wouter. PICKIT 2 is a worthwhile investment for
beginners and frequent users. 

John


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

> 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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> 



 
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