> I'm going to send it FedEx today.

I got it yesterday (Thursday) and didn't have time to really look at it
until today.

> My programming cable has a handedness the pictures on the CD will make
> this clear. The he target board is mounted on an RF board. Remember to
> disconnect the target from the RF board (just pull them apart) as it is
> not 5V tolerant.

I have it disconnected and intend to leave it that way.  I don't care about
your device working, only that the ProProg can program it.

Anyway, here is what I found so far:

The first thing I did was plug in a ProProg and see if it could ID the unit.
It could.  It programmed and verified at 4.2V and 5.5V but then got a
verification error on a config bit.  Then I tried it with a USBProg and it
worked fine.  It programmed and did two verification passes in 59 seconds
using your HEX file.

But every time I tried with a ProProg I got different results, so I looked
at the board more closely.  You never did some of the things I asked you to,
and I expected you had when trying to understand your symptoms.  There were
no caps on PGC and PGC and you were still using the ICD2 cable instead of a
ribbon cable using the 6 pin header on the proprog.  I added two 47pF caps
to your board and in the process noticed that one pin on your adapter board
that plugs onto the 6 pin header on the targer board, and possibly one pin
on that 6 pin header looked like maybe there was a solder problem.  These
kind of SMD headers and sockets are not meant for much stress.  I wouldn't
use them for more than mating two boards once that are then held together
with screws.  Thru hole is definitely more robust for stuff like this.

I fixed the suspect solder joints (at least they looked better with a
jewler's loupe), and then operation was reliable.  Reliably not working that
is.  To take the flaky connectors, kludge board, and the ICD2 cable out of
the equation, I made up a ribbon cable that connects to the 6 pin header on
the programmer and soldered the other end directly to the pads of the
programming header on the target board.  Same result.

I'll spare you the various trouble shooting that followed, but I think I
know what the problem is.  The big difference in signals between the USBProg
and the ProProg is Vpp.  When not in programming mode, the USBProg holds
this low via 22ohms to ground.  When enabling Vpp, the signal rises from 1V
to 13V in about 200nS.  However when the ProProg is driving Vpp high it
jumps to 5V, stays there for 10mS, then does a exponential decay to 13V over
a few mS.  This is definitely not right, and I think explains the problems.
The slow rise time from 5V to 13V is due to your cap C21, which I hadn't
noticed before.  You don't want to put 10nF on Vpp!

I don't have a layout of your board, and couldn't find C21 to try removing
it and see what happens.  If you give me a layout or tell me where it is
I'll try it.

While 10nF on Vpp is definitely a problem, the 10mS plateau at Vdd is a
firmware issue in the ProProg that I'll try to address this weekend.  I
think I understand why it is happening in this case.  However, I think the
rise time will still be too slow with 10nF on the line after I fix the
firmware.


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