Quote Originally Posted by gopher View Post
does this sound like it makes any sence? can USART pins be used to program a part of the chips memory ?
No, not without some sort of preloaded bootloader software (and the knowledge to operate it) loaded into the PIC that's already soldered on the PCB.
You need to hook into PGC/PGD/PGM/MCLR and all Vdd and Vss, and have those pins isolated from major loads on the rest of the PCB to keep from messing with the programming signals.
But you already knew that judging from Post #9...right?