"ian field" wrote in message
...

"Oppie" wrote in message
news:lbF0j.6133$rg1.5870@trndny04...

"ian field" wrote in message
...

What I have is a Velleman K8048 programmer which only level shifts
certain pins on the RS232 connector to 5V logic level and feeds the
resultant signals to the PGD, PGC & VPP pins on the PIC - I was hoping
MPLAB had a compatibility mode for such a "dumb" programmer board.

Obviously the Velleman kit came with programming software, and the kit
schematic is almost identical to a couple of others I've downloaded, but
if a new PIC is introduced I'd have to trawl the net for programmer
software to support it, if it was easy to modify my kit to work with
MPLAB this would be a much simpler problem.

I can only recommend that you contact Microchip tech support and ask. We
have always used the ICD2.

My original enquiry to tech support was whether there was any third party
compatibility in MPLAB - eventually after a bit of pulling toenails they
told me no, so I asked where to order a MPLAB compatible programmer and
they gave me a number in Ireland (long distance from England) and I have
to quote a ticket number to be put through! So I tried emailing sales and
asked "what is the cheapest MPLAB compatible PIC programmer with a ICSP
lead", they told me to get a ticket number and phone tech support -
Microchip has the most "not me guv" departments of any company I've tried
to deal with!

Have you tried these guys http://www.mikroe.com/
They do IDE/Compiler for Basic/C/Pascal - I personally use the Pascal as it
is "Delphi like", I use Delphi for commercial apps.
By the way their PIC stuff is free!