Hello, I'm new to microcontrollers, but am very interested in using them to do many different tasks. Okay, so right now i have a PIC16f84 and a couple atmel at90s2313 microcontrollers and was wondering if you guys knew any easy, cheap programmers that i could make given a schematic. I have a couple parallel port um adapters? i guess you could call it that as well as a db9 adapter to connect to the computer. Oh and well...i guess some diodes, resistors, transistors, etc. However, this computer only has a parallel port so hopefully the programmer can stick to using that. Okay and the other thing is..once i have made the programmer, I was wondering what software i should use to program the microcontroller. Also, i was wondering how to know if the microcontroller is actually talking to the computer or not...like how do i verify if it is working correctly? Also, i do not know assembly and well i've learned a little C++, but I don't know how far off that is from the C you have to use to program these microcontrollers. I have tried making some programmers but have failed because i had no idea how to use IC-prog (err one of those programs err i found online) . Um...at this point the happiest thing in the world for me (ok not the happiest, buttt yeahh) would just be able to see like "Helloworld" output coming back from the microcontroller on the computer. (Or like even the blinking LEDs). So, any help would be great and it can be on either of the microcontrollers i bought. Thanks for the help! OH..and also if you're wondering why i got these microcontrollers even though now they have better counterparts for probably the same or better price...its because I bought it a while back, tried it, got extremely frustrated when trying to get it to work for a long time, and pretty much stopped. And now...i'm interested againnn....and hope i won't have to wait anotherr few yrs..THANKS!