> I can live with firmware-switching as long as it's reliable and doesn't
> end up bricking the programmer on failure (or there's some form of
> emergency recovery procedure that is fairly quick and doesn't require a
> second programmer)...

I think the ICD3 is potentially reliable in this, as the USB is handled by 
an FPGA so they can get 480MB/s, and I would not be surprised to find that 
has the ability to do an emergency re-program of the PIC if need be. 

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