Vintage Pic 16C73

[Art]

Hi Guys

Don’t tell me you don’t think it’s beautiful!



I got a couple on eBay because... vintage collector... but then found of course the PicKit II doesn’t support them.
I haven’t looked hard, but suspect they need a high voltage programming pin for EPROM.
The PicKit II does however retrieve a device ID, which suggests they are ok.

I’m not even certain PBP supports these, but if not, I’m sure a program disassembly for a close relative could be easily ported for it.

Does anyone remember these, and a homebrew programmer the supported them? PicALL? The earlier official programmers like Picstart were not cheap!

Incidentally, I have at least one SP0256 on the way, if anyone remembers that. It’s a speech synthesiser which was well covered in some projects
in my first PicBASIC programming book.. but I never did own one.

[HenrikOlsson]

When I bought my PICStart+ sometime around -96 I think it came with a couple of -JW parts, one of them being a PIC14000 series (IIRC) which was called a mixed signal controller since it had had some analog peripherals inside (!).

I believe I still have the PICStart+ and the chips that came with it somewhere....

[HenrikOlsson]

Here they are, still in the package they came in. A datecode of -97 on one of them means I probably didn't get the PICStart+ in -96...



I've never actually used these. My first real close contact with a PIC was with the venerable 16C84 which I believe also was included (1pcs). At the time I only used the programmer to "burn" exisiting code into the chips (pirated smartcards for satelite TV distribution) and it was only a few years later that I started to use PBC and then PBP after a short period with the classic BS1 and BS2.

[Ioannis]

You naughty Henrik!

Yeah, I started with a Pikstart+ and those widowed chips along with an UV lamp to erase them. 10-15 endless minutes until reprogramming! Yikes!

Ioannis

[Art]

Was the sat access control Irdeto 1? because I wrote PMK and signature decrypt for that on pic (in asm though).

[HenrikOlsson]

Honestly, I have NO idea. I knew nothing about how it worked (still don't really). I barely knew what a PIC was or how you actually wrote a program for it.
I had done a tiny bit of 8051 stuff in school but never quite grasped the whole programming mindset (still don't really...). All I did was etch some boards and programmed some PICs with .hex files (there was two 16C84 on each card) from the World Wide Web.

I remember that when they changed keys (or whatever) I got a bunch of cards back which needed new firmware loaded into them. It really didn't last long (might have done 15-20 cards tops) before it got to a point where they could change keys two or three times in a week and always right before a football game or in the middle of a movie "premiere" and everyone , including me and my "partner in crime" lost interest in it.