Pic programmer

the_anomaly, Tue Aug 01 2006, 12:28PM

A few months ago I decided I wanted to be able to program pic chips for projects and thought a home made programmer was the way to go. The pic16f84a seemed to be popular for beginners so I searched for a programmer to build which also had external power. I found a bunch but I chose Mike Predko's El cheapo as it seemed to be supported with the software. The circuit cost me only about 20 bucks of parts from digikey and took a day to put it together. The software allows the user to send the .hex file through the printer port to the circuit. To make hex files I downloaded a trial of mikrobasic so I could program in basic, and then make my program into a hex file.




The circuit fits onto a small board and I used IC sockets to easily plug in the pic program it then take it out. This circuit also requires a DB25 to DB25 male to male cable. I couldn't find it in the stores so I made my own by taking two regular printer cables, cutting em, and then took both male ends. The cables were form two different companies and while they used the same wire colors the wires went to different pins. Luckily the circuit only uses 5 pins so I used my meter to find which color went to which wire and connected em. Voila:




Its worked very well so far. I was able to program my pic chip with one of mikro basics example programs.