Post by thread:Pro-Mate vs. Everything Else (was: "programmer kit

Chuck McManis (spam_OUTmcmanisTakeThisOuTscndprsn.eng.sun.com) wrote: > Cheapest Kit programmer such as David Taits > Moderate Parallax "Hobby" programmer > Moderate+ Microchip's PICSTART programmer > Moderate++ Parallax's deluxe programmer (Clearview?) > Expensive Microchip's PICMaster programmer > Expensive EMP-20, etc. > .... > One kind (16C84) Kit programmer, no EEPROM parts have > A/D yet > Few kinds (16C5x, 16c7x) Microchips PICSTART (16B or 16C) > Many kinds Parallax "hobby" programmer > Many Kinds Both microchip PICSTART 16B and 16C > Many Kinds PICMaster, EMP-20, etc. > .... > Few per day/week Kit programmer > Few per day/week Parallax or Microchip "Hobby" > programmers. > 10+ per day/ 50+/week PICMaster, EMP-20, etc. Chuck: What you're saying, obviously, is that one gets what one pays for. I have a couple of comments, though. This is minor, but it bugs me every time I see someone make this mistake: Microchip's production-level programmer is called "Pro-Mate", not "PIC-Master". The PIC-Master is, of course, Microchip's in-circuit emulator. Microchip is partly to blame for your confusion; before they realized that the name was already trademarked by DATA I/O, they called their programmer a "Pro-Master". I'm not at all familiar with Parallax's hardware, but I believe that their "Clearview" products are emulators, too. Ok... The main point: Your third criterion (number of parts programmed) shouldn't really be an issue. The difference in programming speed between the "hobby" programmers (Microchip's PICSTART or Parallax's DOWNLOADER) and the much-more-expensive Pro-Mate is fairly slight, and, in the case of the PICSTART-to-Pro-Mate upgrade, the user interface is even the same. A more important reason to choose the Pro-Mate is that it programs PICs using Microchip's production-approved multiple-voltage verification protocol. If the reliability of your programmed PICs over their full voltage range is important to you, you pretty much have to use the Pro-Mate. -Andy -- Andrew Warren - .....fastfwdKILLspam@spam@ix.netcom.com Fast Forward Engineering, Vista, California