A Word About Programmers

[The Tone God]

I've been having the exact same experience with my DIY PIC programmer.  Let us use this post to build a bridge from the AVR devotees to the PIC devotees.   

I don't think having good quality equipment is the sole domain of any architecture.

The reason I started this thread is when I announced that I was going to be doing lessons I got alot of people asking me what programmer they should get or that the STK500 seemed alittle expensive so why could they use one of the cheap programmers. This thread was to deal with those questions ahead of time so as to lighten my load.

I strongly believe that with all the different things going on with developing with uC the last thing you should have to be concerned with is your programmer. A possible bad programmer just adds a whole other factor in debugging that can waste ALOT of time and even more if you are in experienced.

Great idea, so what do you (or any other experienced PIC'ers) recommend for a reliable programmer/software setup?

While alittle bit more expensive then other programmers when I did PIC stuff I used the PICSTART Plus programmers which come from Microchip themselves. I usually like to use tools from the manufacture because you can almost always be sure they will support it in both hardware and software.

Andrew

[Dave_B]

I've been having the exact same experience with my DIY PIC programmer.  Let us use this post to build a bridge from the AVR devotees to the PIC devotees.   

I don't think having good quality equipment is the sole domain of any architecture.

For reasons I can't explain, my cheap programmer slowly stopped working.  After reading about it a little, my experience wasn't all that unusual.  All the money I saved has been lost many times over in productivity, since I've basically abandoned a project I spent six weeks working on.  Because of that I'm planning on buying an STK500 when DigiKey gets them back in.

[danngreen]

For reasons I can't explain, my cheap programmer slowly stopped working.  After reading about it a little, my experience wasn't all that unusual. 

very interesting, my seemed to get worse and worse until it just wouldnt work often enough

[R.G.]

On a dissenting note - I gave up on my hanging-garden PIC programmer when the wires kept breaking. I got a much more expensive one ($35) because I wanted a ZIF socket to make many programming cycles easy. I must have 2000 programming cycles on my USB programmer.

On support and quality in programmers -
You absolutely need support. I researched programmers and found that the KitsRUs stuff is regularly updated. Likewise the one from Olmos.

A programmer that does not ... quite meet the programming voltages may slowly degrade the chips you're using. That would make it look like the programmer was slowly failing.

[Dave_B]

A programmer that does not ... quite meet the programming voltages may slowly degrade the chips you're using. That would make it look like the programmer was slowly failing.

That makes sense, R.G.  Thanks for that.  The programmer is putting out the same voltages as always, pulling everything from the serial port.  All the better programmers I've seen rely on a dedicated supply.

[Dave_B]

When I checked the Digikey site today, it showed that only 1 programmer was scheduled to arrive on 4/7.

Out of curiosity, I called to see what the real number is.  Um, they're expecting 666. 

[The Tone God]

They usually quote the "Standard Package" for that which in this case is one.

Andrew