I have been trying to develop a general purpose prototyping board for the Microchip PIC 16F877A . My aim is to build a board with the following features
a) All ports and other on board devices must be easily taken out to a solderless bread board.
b) In circuit serial programming.
c) boot loader.
d) the board will have some switches , an LCD module , a few LEDs and a pot for analog input simulation.
My design is almost complete. In fact, there is nothing new in the design. I have done cut and paste from several circuits.
I am planning to post schematics and experiences while building the board on this blog.
Today, I have completed the in circuit serial programming module(ICSP). This is based on this article by Ian Lesnet.My final prototype is shown below. The pcb layout for home brewing via toner transfer method is here.
The original article uses a PCB mounted 9 pin D connector. I I found it inconvenient ,after soldering the board. Instead , Ifixed a piece of ribbon cable. My programming set up is shown below. Just wire the connectors to the appropriate pins.
The board lacks any indicators. I am planning to redesign the pcb with 2 indicator LEDs later.
The software I used is winpic800 . It works like a charm. ( The default interface is in Spanish, change it to english by selecting Idioma->English in the main menu)
http://tharks.blogspot.com/