PIC Programing

A number the MEDW projects use PIC's as their processors, but maintaining a working programmer has been fun. My original programmer was a third party USB device, but as seems to be all to common these days its USB connection failed. With an offer from Microchip for the PICKit2 at a cheap price I picked one up and used that for a while, but when that failed recently, I picked up second only for that to fail as well. What to do next was the question.

Following a suggestion from Les Jones I opted for the more expensive PICKit3 which I've been trying to get to work today. The device came with a CD but no obvious stand alone application as used by the PICKit2 which seemed strange. It only had a copy of MPLab 8 which I did already have installed on the XP machine, but which was an older version. Trying to update from CD failed due to a corrupt .CAB file so I downloaded MPLab X which is the current version from Microchip but having installed that I still failed to work out how to simply download a .hex file to a device! MPLabX complained that PICKit3 needed updating but provided no facility to do that.

Digging around, I found a version of the PICKit2 application recompiled for the PICKit3 and this automatically updated the firmware in the PICKit3 module before even providing the application window. Having now got an easily accessible interface, I was able to check out a DivisionMaster PIC and program it, which is what I'd been doing when the second PICKit2 failed. Returning to the MPLab X IDE, the update to the module allowed the same process to be carried out via the 'Programmer-to-go' mode, but I see little point downloading the target software to the programmer if it is only designed to be used for development programming? If I only had one dvice to program and had a lot of chips to process, then this stand alone mode makes sense, but not when you have several projects to program chips for.

Having now got a working programmer, I foolowed up on Les's suggestion to try reprogramming the PICKit2 boards. These boards use an 18F2550 chip, and while the later unit is now restored, the earlier unit is still not working. Even though it's a surface mount chip, I will have a go at replacing it and see if that will work, but I am on a bit of a roll.  So much so that taking a look at the original third party programmer, it to has an 18F2550 dip socket PIC which is reading OK, so I'll add one of them to the order.

Winding back through things, the original programmer could handle the 18F84 used in the Tacho kits. Something which the PICKit2 was unable to handle, but an upgraded device data file added that back as a legacy device.

A set of local copies of useful material is stored in the Microchip Gallery

ToDo - crib sheet for PICKit2 programmer and maintenance notes.