Sorry to be a pain but I have been doing some more reading up on this and it appearsfrom the notes on the melabs site that by connecting the epic programmer direct to the labx2 board via the 10 pin headers it is possible simply to program direct from the epic with no special software and this is what seemed to be working before the board developed a fault I have replicated this circuit on my new board. The only things I have not done are to pull rb3 low or connect a bypass capacitor to Vdd. All I get when trying to program is a program code error. Can't check again at the moment as I have blown up the 16f877 by plugging it into the board wrong (to avoid which was the reason I wanted to use icp in the first place. I ordered some new ones from my uk supplier who told me that the 16f877A was the same as the 16f877. Turns out that it isn't and my epic programmer will not program them .. i am none too pleased !)