Legacy Programmers

[Mike - K8LH]

Nigel, have you noticed that almost all of the newest features seem to be bypassing the 18-pin devices and only showing up in 8, 14, 20, 28, and 40 pin devices these last few years? At least that's my perception.

 

[Mike - K8LH]

I purchased some of these 40-pin ZIF sockets awhile back. Perhaps it's time to build a new adapter that will plug directly into my PICKIT3.

I've been meaning to design and possibly sell a new programming adapter anyway because all of the more recent PIC devices support a new and improved LVP (Low Voltage Programming) method and it's relatively easy to program these devices with nothing more than a $2 Arduino Nano. The only caveat for using devices with the new LVP method is that you have to be able to leave the MCLR pin in MCLR mode.

 

[JonSea]

I'm kind of lazy myself I needed to reprogram a bunch of 28 pin parts. I used a board laid out for a 28 pin part, added a 28 pin ZIF and a 6 oin header and I was business.

The only difficulty was the ZIF socket had oversize wide flat pins. It took a little effort to get the socket into the board. Look for ZIF sockets with small round pins to make this easier.

This happened to be a board that turned out to be a bust for the intended application, so it was a double win.

 

[Mike - K8LH]

Yeah, being able to use an existing high-quality board is definitely a win, Jon.

The Aries series ZIF sockets have very nice small round pins that actually will fit quite nicely in a machined pin socket, if needed... they're just a bit expensive. If you have an inexpensive alternative with smaller pins, please let us know? Thanks...

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Nigel, have you noticed that almost all of the newest features seem to be bypassing the 18-pin devices and only showing up in 8, 14, 20, 28, and 40 pin devices these last few years? At least that's my perception.

Well I 'was' obviously using the 16F628 'back in the day' (and before that the 16F84, and even before that the 16C84). My recent PIC of choice is the 18 pin 16F1827/16F1847, which is essentially a much enhanced version of the 628. However, I've recently started playing with the 40 pin 16F18877 (as I bought a few XPress boards with it), which is even more 'enhanced' than the 16F1827/47, and has LOAD's of data and program memory (32K program space). Following on from that I've bought some 28 pin versions, the 16F18857, which is a more manageable size, with the same memory etc. I've been looking on Microchip for smaller versions, but couldn't find any.

But recently be80be posted a link to a free XPress board, using the 16F18446 (https://www.microchip.com/promo/pic16f184xx-product-family), which I've ordered, and checking the chip details it's available as 20 pin as well (but not 18 pin), so once I've received the free board, and had time to play with it, I'll probably order some 20 pin versions, or even the 14 pin ones.

As you say, the 18 pin size seems to be getting phased out? - I wonder why? - particularly as previously the 20 pin version was often just the 18 pin version with two dummy pins added.