more programmer problems

Those PIC programmer problems start to irritate me.

Last night I tried to program my PIC using an XP computer. The stuff I used:
Pentium 3 500 MHz PC
Windows XP no service pack.
SERPIC programmer , design David Tait
JDM programmer.
Winpic programming software.

The combination JDM programmer and Winpic worked fine. So the serial port can be used for programming PIC's Thats is a relief. I read that some people have encountered problems when using serial port PC programmers. So far so good.

Unfortunately the SERPIC was not supported by Winpic. The programmer can be selected but Winpic thinks it is a programmer that uses the parallel port. Winpic also supports PARPIC which is a programmer that uses the parallel port. PARPIC is also designed by David Tait. So I guess something is wrong in Winpic. The program is not maintained anymore so no updates can be expected. Fortunately the programmers can be defined by the user. So I defined SERPIC myself.

No luck, The programmer was not recognized by Winpic. Nevertheless I could manipulate the programming pins using Winpic so I gave it a try. No luck of course. Then I tried to find out how a programmer is detected. It is simply a loopback of dataout to data in. My programmer should be able to do that so I had another look at the hardware. I found a short circuit. After fixing that I was able to program the PIC. Unfortunately some instability issues popped up. Sometimes the RS232 pins don't work after starting Winpic. Sometimes the polarity of these pins are inverted.
Another issue is that Winpic hangs when a mouse is clicked during programming.

I have found another more recent program called Winpic800. Tonight I will give it a try.

I thought about using the JDM programmer for in circuit programming. It should be possible but it is tricky. Especially when an external power supply is used. The risk of destroying the serial port or the programmer is high. I could use relays to switch the PIC pins between programming mode and run mode. I may do that if I can not fix the problems with SERPIC.