Programing a Microcontroller with an FPGA board.

Hey all, I just ran across this site, and hoped someone might be able to answer a question of mine, or if not point me in the right direction.

I recently picked up an altera cyclone ii FPGA dev board FPGA Board, FPGA Development Kit
after using it in a class and realizing it's potential for rapid prototyping.

Since an FPGA can mimic any electronic circuit, I was wondering how difficult it would be to use this dev board as a programmer for a microcontroller? I'm decently competent at Verilog, so if no one knows if the code's been written before, I'm all for giving it a shot, but I'm just not too clear on what is NECESSARY for programming a microcontroller.

The microcontroller I have on hand is a PIC16f877.

Right now I'm reading through Nigel's PIC tutorial page

Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

-Adam Kistler
Elec. Eng. UCDavis class of 2011 (hopefully)

Full details of the programming requirements can be downloaded from MicroChip, note there are MANY different algorithms used, not just one.

I wouldn't have thought anyone has done it before, it seems a pretty pointless way to build a programmer?.