Well not too far, unlike my pickit which is now is Nige's hands after I messed up replacing its xceivers, I'm in Garstang between preston and lancaster.
I did reprogram the firmware on my kitrus, I remember I wanted to blow a chip that it didnt blow before, I think it was a 18f series, I might have the original dump on one of my backup discs.
I ordered a cheap pickit 2 clone off ebay from malaysia, I'm not in that much of a panic, I'll just develop my code on a 'f628 then dump it to a 'f54, only the file reg addresses and dumping 7 in cmcon is different.
Thanks for your offer, I might well take that up if my newun doesnt arrive soon, the pickit was usefull on my more indepth projects as I developed and debugged on a 'f866 then ported that to my target device.