PIC Programmer: Weird Measurements

[GUILHERME]

Hi.

Just a thought:

Have you checked the cable connecting the computer to your programmer ? Depending on it being a nullmodem cable or not, some of your signal wires could be switched. More info here:

http://www.cc86.org/~pjf/hwb/ca_Nullmodem9to9.html



BTW, I'm also corrently working with a pic in the same range as yours ( 18F442 ). I've built the "programmer" into the device I'm designing so I can do in-circuit programming. I've compiled the Brocolli source code into a win32 binary and use that with the hex output from mplab to program the pic.

Guilherme.

[Devil_H@ck]

I just searched some more for a possible error. First I turned the two transistors 180°. That seemed to yield better measurements, but still not good. Then I saw that pin 6 from the COM connector was pin 9 on my PCB, so I cut some lines, soldered some wires, ... In the end I found out that I had read my PCB layout upside down . And so I'm back at where I came from .

[Devil_H@ck]

In case anyone is interested, I decided to make another programmer. After lots of searching I found the PPWin programmer, which has a 8-, 18- & 40- pins socket already on board, so almost all PICs can be programmed without an adapter. There's also an ISP socket on the board.

I made the PCB last Thursday and I was amazed at the kind of detail I could obtain with just a transparency and an inktjet printer. 5mil tracks without a problem, nice .

Yesterday, I soldered everything onto the board & today I connected the parallel port connector. I just tested it and it worked from the first time.

Now I like buffered, powered programmers better than programmers who get there supply from the RS232 port .

Link to the programmer: http://www.semis.demon.co.uk/Pics/PICmain.htm
If you want to make the PCB, I suggest you download Easy-PC from here: http://www.numberone-usa.com/downloadrequest.asp.htm. It allows you to import the Boardmaker .pcb file that can be found in the zip file on the programmer's site. The result should be a lot better compared to using the bmp in the zip for printing.

Pictures will be on my website soon.

Oh, btw, the parts (+ parallel cable) + pcb cost me +- 12€. I'm pretty sure you can't buy any commercial programmer that can do as much as this one for that price .

[jackinnj]

this is the one I use (I do have a PICSTART which Microchip gave away at one of their seminars, but it always needs reprogramming), the MELABS serial programmer is a breeze to use: