Two dead 16F877A and one 16F628A duff eeprom

[Dick Ivers]

Chirpy, By any chance was your clone PICkit 2 an iCP01 by piccircuit.com? I have one and it seems OK ... I hope.

[Chirpy]

no, the iCP01 seemed to be kinda cheap made for me, so I just got the sure electronics clone. Its an identical clone of the official pickit2. Also alot of people said a bunch bad about the company, but Ive never had any issues with mine, and I use it almost nonstop.

[tasmod]

OK a bit of an update.

I had problems with two more f628a's where the programmer threw up a Bad Rom error. So i borrowed a friends identical programmer and it programmed the f628s just fine. I did some more code work and attempted to program the chips for about the fifth time when the error appeared again using my friends programmer.
From then on every time I tried I got an error.

I couldn't work it out. I then closed the laptop etc and went away leaving it all for a day.
When i returned first thing i did was to try programming a 628 and it worked fine! More code changes etc and then somewhere further down the line the eeprom code error appeared again. I closed down, waited a while and restarted the laptop. Same again it programmed just fine for quite a while before the code error appeared again. (I'm working on three projects in 628s)

So something is wrong either with the code, laptop, MPASM compiling or the programmer software. I suspect the programmer software as it's a cheapo.

I haven't yet tested the 877s which have been programmed indepenently elsewhere. The pcb isn't finished and I don't want to disturb anything.

I now think static has nothing to do with my problems, especially after Darrels info.

In use:
MicroCode Studio Editor
MPASM for compiling (at moment DDS asm files)
Ebay 149 kit type programmer. (Always been fine)

[Ioannis]

On your programmer is there an option to erase before programming the chip?

If yes, selecting this option, does make any difference?

Ioannis

[tasmod]

Yes, I tried that route but it still threw up the error.

Seems a total system shutdown for a while will allow programming after restart. This lasts for a while before the error appears again.

[Acetronics2]

Hi,

Laptop AND Programmer generally gives a really bad cocktail ...

Did you try behaviour aboard a good ol' "wardrobe" computer ??? ...

Alain