Quote Originally Posted by mister_e View Post
In this order.

Unless your current hardware don't use Serial communication, there's no need to use a switch, no need for HSEROUT either. What you do is to sit your PICKIT on the regular programming pins (MCLR, PGD, PGC) all the time, then you use DEBUG/SEROUT/SEROUT2 on PGD I/O. For this you must use TRUE mode.

Clear enough now?

I may try to post an example before going to sleep.
I'm hearing what your saying, but without an example to follow, I'm still left wondering how this is achieved.

To set out my stall again - programming is new to me - I'm more of an old analogue electronics type. I can relate to a switch! I took one look a the PICKIT2 UART Tool connectivity diagram....




& one look at the PICKIT2 schematic...



& saw that it only needed two pins switched...then I can simply go between programming mode & UART tool mode with the flick of a switch. In the absence of anything else meaningful 9to me at least), I followed up that path.

I can't believe just how much of a struggle it is for a newbie to get a 16F690 (probably the chip most newbies are exposed to as it comes with the PICKIT2) to do somethign as bland as send some stuff over a serial connection! (I don't mean about the h/w aspect, I mean getting the correct 'include' files & config, the register settings, the quirks about baud rates when using internal oscillators (as most newbies do)...then there's the h/w aspect .....what a lot of work!