I have studied the specs on your new USB programmer. It is exactly what 
I need, and in my opinion, what
EVERYBODY needs. I am impressed. I will order one as soon as Lois gets 
up (she works nights).

My only complaint: price is too low. Needs to be about $100.

--Bob

Olin Lathrop wrote:
>
> I have recently added the -VDD command line option on PIC_PROG.  That tells
> the program to use that single Vdd level for all operations, which also
> causes it to do only one verify pass.  A single Vdd level could also be
> specified in the PICPRG.ENV file for that PIC.
>
> However you're not going to save much since the bulk of the time is spent
> writing, not reading.  The 16F676 requires 8mS/word, which is the limiting
> factor in this case.  This can also be seen from the large difference
> between the full and empty times.  The only difference between them is that
> the HEX file specified the erased value in the empty case and random values
> in the full case.  The programming algorithm therefore skipped all ordinary
> program memory and EEPROM writes in the empty case.
>
> The absolute minimum time to write to all the program memory and EEPROM of a
> 16F676 is (1024 prog mem words + 128 EEPROM bytes) x 8mS = 9.2 seconds.
> Note that my fastest case is only 2.6 seconds more than that.  The time to
> start the program, inquire the programmer firmware capabilities, determine
> the target chip type, perform the Vdd and Vpp manipulations with settling
> time, read the calibration constants and restore them after erasing, do the
> bulk erase, round the 8mS wait time up to the nearest whole internal clock
> ticks, and perform two full readbacks of the chip all come out of the
> remaining 2.6 seconds.  You just aren't going to save a lot of time
> eliminating one of the readback passes in this case.
>
>
> ********************************************************************
> Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products
> (978) 742-9014.  Gold level PIC consultants since 2000.
>   

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