Wednesday, 30 November 2011

PICKit2 clone programmer alternatives

Something has happened to our faithful old PIC programmer - it was (was being the key word) a PICKit2 clone, iCP01 from piccircuit.com and had worked tirelessly for about three years.
But for some reason, it has suddenly stopped working.
No puff of smoke or funny smell - it just stopped working.


At first it had problems recognising a 16F877A DIP, so - as we always do before wiggling wires - it was removed from the USB port (removing any power from the breadboard) and then when it was plugged in there was no "bing-bong" or any indication that the PC had recognised the USB device.

That's it. Despite stripping off the yellow shrink wrap and inspecting the components on the board (nothing seems to have blown and there's continuity across the connections where you'd expect there to be) the device simply refuses to work.

The PICKit2 software doesn't even recognise that the device is plugged in, and Device Manager fails to identify it too. So it's officially dead. The question is, do we get another one (they're great little programmers and really fast too) or try something else?

2 comments:

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  2. Hi, please try to resolder the USB connector pins. The USB pins might be loose after certain amount of usage. You may direct contact us support@piccircuit.com if this solution is not able solve your problem.

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