timothyjackson said:
hey,
Oh yeah, How come its so cheap, i thought programmers were quite expensive?
I would advise you against it.
I started out with a budget of their programmers. i had so much hassle getting it to work. i took it to a friend whos a pro with pic's, and, even he was confused by it.
I'm somewhat bemused by this?, someone who's "a pro with pic's" and he's confused by a simple David Tait type programmer?.
get a good, recognised programmer. PIC work is really precise, one little thing can prevent your entire project from working. If your just starting out with pic's, I little that little tiny weeeny little error be in your code/knowledge, not the programmer.
The P16PRO40 is a GOOD, RECOGNISED programmer, there's probably far more in use world wide than the PICStart Plus - particularly if you count all the similar David Tait inspired designs.
Go for a PIC START plus. Much much better. works with mPLAB (free and real easy to use). thats the best thing I did.
It's FAR too expensive, and FAR too slow, if you can afford to pay that amount for a programmer , fair enough - and it has the bonus of rapid updates for new devices. But the price puts most people off, I certainly can't afford one!. Also, the performance is so SLOWWWWWW!, often a decent parallel port design will absolutely wipe the floor with the PICStart Plus. I was doing some tests last night with some short programs on a 16F628, programming (and verification) took under a second! - I understand it's many times longer than that with a PICStart Plus?.