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What? Why?

For one. That is, for one chip. Specifically, the PIC16F84. When I started building my second-ish robot (GanzBotJr), PIC MCUs were becoming all the rage. His main processor was a HandyBoard with a Motorola 68HC11, but I decided to add a few PIC’s for additional features. My old website from the GanzBotJr era documents some of that.

In particular, I used the PIC16F84 since it was cheap, available, and I wanted to learn it. It was a miracle part – it had FLASH! What an upgrade from the 68HC11!

Device programmers for the PIC weren’t cheap items yet, and everybody was making their own parallel port (yes, really, parallel port) programmers. I did the same and used it to program the PICs in GanzBotJr’s head that drove all his LED “expressions”. More capable parts like the PIC16F876 – that I later used in projects at work – were not just yet on the market. Building a programmer for the PIC16F84 that everybody was using and could be programmed with a free assembler from Microchip, just made sense.

I used it for a year or two until cheap 3rd party USB PIC programmers started coming on the scene. They were a huge improvement compared to my homebrew programmer since they did ICSP nicely and handled the whole family of PIC parts.

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What’s inside?

Looking inside, nothing super cool – a 7805, some 2N3904 NPNs and looks like a zener for the programming voltage. Always fun to open old projects up. Looks like a bit better construction techniques than my other ANCIENT builds. This was a handful of years after the AutoFire, Scope, and Distortion Box and other projects and I had quite a few more tools by then. I also see the step up from masking tape in those projects to what looks like Scotch tape here.

I didn’t fire it up, but assume it still works. No idea where the command line software is to drive it anyhow. Then again, that may be easier to find than a parallel port.

Update 12/20 – Looks like the PC s/w to drive this programmer is still out there. Somebody archived it here.