Well if I program the chip using the ME Labs serial programmer everything works fine and dandy so I can only assume the oscillator is operating properly. Like I said, I've tried the 4 MHz and the bootloader works great, using the 16 or 40 MHz and it's dead in the water.

I tried removing all references to the USART and it still gave me the same message.

Quote Originally Posted by Bruce
Assuming your oscillator is working properly, you're using DEFINE OSC to match the loader, and connections are good, it should work fine unless there's a bug in the loader firmware. But I have never had any problems with MCS loader firmware.

Reset required just means the PC app isn't communicating with the PIC loader. Just out of curiosity, what happens if you comment out all of your HSER defines & all references to HSEROUT/HSERIN?

Will it boot-load then?