Ok firstly I'm sure this has been covered before but I can't find it so sorry about asking again...

Programmer in question is A JDM type powered from a 9 pin serial port.

After having tried to program 6 different PIC's (all compatible with my programmer) with a few different programs and having them all fail to program it occurs to me that I must have a problem somewhere, Now I recall reading somewhere that a comment problem for people programming PIC's is their computer isn't supplying enough voltage to the programmer, with this in mind can anyone tell me what the voltage is meant to be and what pins of the serial port I would need to check for said voltage.

Thanks in advance.

Dawn.

 

Do you have LVP Programming enabled?

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Posting the schematic diagram would help, but MCLR on the PIC needs to swing to +12V or more to enter programming mode.

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to be honest I don't have a schematic diagram... the Programmer is prebuilt... it's one of these: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Serial-PIC-pr...QQcmdZViewItem

Dawn

 

Then the best test is as I mentioned above. Setup the software to program a PIC with a larger HEX file but don't plug a PIC in. Now measure between the pins where the PICs Vss and MCLR pins would fit while the software is trying to program the absent PIC. You should have around 12V or so; anything less will be hit and miss because the spec for programming is typically between 12 & 14V on MCLR with a nominal value of 13V. I have also seen it spec'd as a minimum of Vdd+3.5 ( 8.5V) and a max of 13.5V for some PICs. You might also want to try the programmer on another, preferably older, computer. Good luck.

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ok I'll test the voltages... but on the front how much older should my computer be then a P3 866mhz system... because I could knock together a 486 if that would be more useful...

Dawn

 

It has more to do with the older serial port cards as opposed to CPU speed. The older serial cards put out more voltage than the newer ones do. Laptops tend to put out lower voltages than desktops because of the serial IO chips they use.

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Nothing to do with PIC programming, but I have seen similar differences with laptop / desktop serial port voltages. I assumed that was because desktops have a great big power supply that include +12V and -12V, so that what the serial line swings to.

On laptops, every voltage needs to be generated and the power used will be less if the serial line voltage is kept low. I think that the RS232 standard demands at least +/- 5 V, and some laptops don't exceed that by much. The MAX232 will only generate twice its supply voltage, so can only achieve +/-10 V from a 5 V supply, and many laptops run similar devices from 3.3 V. Also some RS232 driver ICs (near equivalents to MAX232) actually regulate at just over 5V.

 

From the picture it looks like a standard JDM programmer. As long as you are using a real serial port and not a USB to serial converter then it should work fine on that computer.

I would suggest downloading WinPic from this site as this seems the most reliable. It has the ability to turn Vpp on in a test section and a very good FAQ.

Mike.

 

Hi Dawny, take the schematic and other details from site below

http://www.olimex.com/dev/pic-pg2c.html

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Sarma.

 

Hey all. I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who posted to this thread and helped me. Thanks all.

mvs sarma: Also thanks for that link, with the data on that page and other pages connected it I was finally able to make my programmer work and while it was just a simple thing I managed to burn a simple LED flasher program to a PIC16F84A earlier and just then I was able to make a simple frequency counter from a PIC16F628A. Yay I’m a happy gal now and tomorrow I can get on with working out how to write and compile my own programs.

Once again thank you all.

Dawn

 

There is another frequency counter which could measure upto 40MHz. it uses 16F84A and 4MHz crystal
Google for IK3OIL frequency counter. you will be happy using it in the days to come.


All the best to you Dawny

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Sarma.

 

heyy... here is a good pic programmer is easy and cheapa is with serial port has everything to do it search http://feng3.cool.ne.jp/en/pg5v2.html

 

i was looking for a pic programmer with usb port that y could do with the schematic diagram

 

this is a good programer http://feng3.cool.ne.jp/en/pg5v2.html