Bob Axtell wrote:
> Probably only ONE NiMH AA would be needed, methinks.

That would make the converter difficult because of the low voltage going in.
With two primary AA cells you can rely on 2.0V before it's OK to declare the
cells dead and give up.  With NiMH you should work down to 900mV per cell.
Even if you treat them like primary cells, just 1V is difficult to work with
and use it efficiently.  One cell also gets you half the capacity.  It would
be a lot easier to tell people they have to replace the batteries every
200-500 programming operations, and I don't see that as a marketing problem.

> --- and Olin, Microchip loves you. They would get behind it if it were
> in a nice case.
> Remember whereas we are engineering types, they are marketing types. Ask
> 'em if there
> is a market, and see what _they_ say. You will be surprised.

I have in the past asked them about what they would want in a programmer and
if there was any interest in a USBProg-like device designed externally to
their specs.  It has never met with any interest.  Perhaps it might be
different now that someone can actually hold a USBProg in their hands, but I
rather doubt it.  They have a full time professional tools group that does
these things.


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