i just made one, and it works fine...
i was starting to mess with PIC24 i used the opportunity to make a pickit2 clone.
(thank you microchip for free sample of pic18f2550)
of course i had to program it first. in my case i just plugged pic18f2550 into breadboard,
connected the 5 wires to borrowed PicKit3 and downloaded the firmware.
after than chip was plugged into pickit2 clone.
next step was to get PICkit 2 v2.61 (also from Microchip) and test the hardware. this was straight forward.
the only thing i did that was not part of test is high voltage Vpp but it can be forced. also checked ok.
part that did't go well was 3.3V regulator, because i received wrong zener (ordered 4.3V but measured only 3.6V).
because of this, it could not reliably read 3.3V chips. i am not the most patient guy so i just lifted one leg of
that zener culprit and added in series forward biased diode. now i get 3.5 instead of 3.3V but everything works.
so far i used it to program bunch of other chips, including pic18, pic24 and pic30