Ok, well its very clear now that this JDM programmer just is not going to erase a chip with my configuration. For the record it has no power supply... just runs off the serial port and there is some issue with it running code before the programmer can get to it so...

Instead of trying to build a whole new programmer... I would like to just sacrifice maybe one of my chips to build a down and dirty simple "bulk eraser". My thoughts are this:

Use one pin for a push button to start the whole procedure...

Once button is pushed it will activate a transistor to bring MCLR high and initiate programming mode all from the one PIC chip. So one transistor would be the only other component... the rest would just be using PIC to PIC pinout...

So now my question is... does anyone know the exact specification for bulk erasing a pic?