A great addition to the PICKit 2 is available on ebay - a small pcb with 
ZIF sockets for 18, 20, 28 and 40 pin PICs, wired to a six pin ICSP 
connector.  I ordered one of these and it works great.  I spot-checked 
for a number of PICs and the connections were correct for all of them.

You can see the board here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/PIC-kit-2-ICD2-COMPATIBLE-PROGRAMMER-EXTENSION-PICkit-2_W0QQitemZ170270483706QQihZ007QQcategoryZ4661QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

If the link doesn't work, search on "PIC kit 2 ICD2 COMPATIBLE 
PROGRAMMER EXTENSION" and you should be able to find them.

Jon

Xiaofan Chen wrote:
> There are actually three versions.
> 1) PICKit 2 Programmer/Debugger
> 2) PICKit 2 + PIC16F690 based demo board (Starter Express)
> 3) PICKit 2 + PIC16F887 based demo board (Debug Express). There was
> an older version which uses PIC16F917.
>
> If you do not need demo board, 1) at US$35 is a good choice.
> 2) is also a good choice as it has a socket which can adopt
> all 8/14/20 pin PICs. These 8/14/20pin PICs do not have
> ICSP debugging function in their silicon. You need to buy
> special header (same as ICD 2) to debug the chip.
> 3) is also a good choice as you can try out the debugging
> function on the board. 16F887 (as well as 16F917) has the
> debug function silicon inside.
>
> PICkit 2 Faq here:
> http://forum.microchip.com/tm.aspx?m=270347
>
> Regards,
> Xiaofan
>
>   

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