ICSP from Picstart Plus?

[Angus Anderson]

Hi all-
I recently upgraded my Picstart with the flash board. I noticed that there are 5 pads on the upgrade piggyback board that are not allocated to anything. Would I be lucky enough to hope that these contacts could be led out to make an ICSP programmer out of the Picstart?

[mister_e]

Nop, those contact are the ICSP points to program that Flash Upgrade Board.

I used it once when an update failed and put my PICSTART unusable.

If one day it happen and you have a third party programmer who support the PIC on the flash upgrade module, send an e-mail to the Microchip TechSupport and they will send you the BOOTLOADER firmware. erase the PIC, then re-load the BOOTLOADER in. THEN replace the Module in the PICSTART and redo the firmware update.



Hello Steve,

You will notice on the PUM PCB there is a 5pin through-hole section on the PCB that you can use for reflashing the device. Pin 1 on the PCB should correlate to MCLR/VPP, Pin 2 VDD, Pin 3 VSS, Pin4 PGD, and Pin 5 PGC.


Maybe pin4 and 5 are reverted in that.. i had a problem when i flash it the first time and i revert those pins... My mistake or their.. i can't confirm since it worked BTW

I use PicStart for ICSP... no problem as now. See the folowing thread
http://www.picbasic.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=703&highlight=simple+icsp

Look post 19 and 25.

[Angus Anderson]

Hi Steve-

Yup, I should have thought of that, the flash in the Picstart had to be programmed at the beginning somehow !

Thanks for the links and advice

Angus Anderson