At 12:47 PM 4/21/2004, Jason Hsu wrote:
>I noticed that for most microcontrollers, there are
a number of
>different programmers out there that one can purchase.
>
>What should you look for in a programmer? What (other than price)
>distinguishes one from another? I'd like to hear from any of you who
>have experience using multiple different programmers.
We've got 3- PicStart Plus programmers here as well as a K128 from
<www.kitsrus.com> and Olin Lathrop's programmer
<www.embedinc.com> .
The programmer from kitsrus is just excellent. It is faster than the PS+
and can automatically reload the hex file when it changes - makes it nice
for debugging code. Its limitation is that it is good for only the flash
parts. However, its siblings can program pretty much any of the 12 & 14
bit core parts. I don't know which of the 18F parts are supported - I
suspect most of them but you would have to check the website to find out
for sure.
The author of K128 and its siblings is our own Tony Nixon - he is *very*
responsive to any issues that you might have.
The PS+ programmers we have get used all the time. While they are not the
quickest programmers around, they are an officially supported programmer
and, so far, have been able to be updated to handle all new PICs that
Microchip creates. They are the programmers we for production even though
they are not officially rated for that use. Number of chips programmed by
them is multiple tens of thousands and I am not aware of any failures - ever.
Olin's programmer seems OK - it is fairly speedy but can't program any
of
the 12 bit core parts yet. It is, however, a true production programmer
capable of verifying at the upper and lower Vdd limits. I haven't used it
as much as I wanted because of the lack of 12 bit support.
The other programmer I intend to check out is Wouter's "WIsp".
But I
haven't used it yet and can't offer an opinion.
For what its worth, the fellow using the K128 won't ever consider going
back to the PS+. His projects use only flash parts and the K128 suits him
just fine - its easier and faster to use than the PS+.
Finally, we've also got a couple of so-called universal programmers from
Xeltek - the SuperPro II and SuperPro 580U. While they work just fine,
they do not get support for new chips as quickly as the others that I've
mentioned above. In fact, the SuperPro II has not had any updates for
several years - it is considered obsolete by the manufacturer. They also
cost 2 or 3 times what the PS+ costs - that means they cost 10 times what
the 3rd party programmers cost. Unless you have other types of chips to
program (eproms, pld or cpld, AVR, etc), they are probably overkill for
most users.
dwayne
--
Dwayne Reid <>
Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA
(780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax
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