gnupic@linuxhacker.org

A followup on my original question about picstart plus firmware revisions 
and picp usb compatibility.

I ended up giving up on burning my own picstart plus firmware. Purchased a 
copy of picstart plus firmware 3.00.40 for $18 (this is burned and neatly
labeled on a PIC17C44) from http://www.hvwtech.com . Note their website
says 3.4 firmware, but its 3.00.40.

I then used the Keyspan (USA-19QW) USB to serial adapter and tested picp
version 0.5c on two laptops.

1) Sony Vaio running Redhat 8.0 Linux
2) Apple iBook running OS/X (10.2.3)

The iBook required a driver download for the USB adapter from the
keyspan site. I grabbed keyspan usa 1.4 driver for OS/X. Worked
fine for commonication with the picstart plus programmer.

An example of the syntax for communicating through the USB serial port
to the picstart plus programmer with a 16f84 in it:

linux - picp /dev/ttyUSB0 16f84 -v
OS/X - picp /dev/tty.USA19QW1P1.1 16f84 -v

I have found the keyspan device driver to work significantly better
under the OS/X installation. The linux one seems to require multiple
retries using the keyspan.o module included in the default RH8 errata
kernel I am running 2.4.18-19.8.0.

filename:
/lib/modules/2.4.18-19.8.0/kernel/drivers/usb/serial/keyspan.o
description: "Keyspan USB to Serial Converter Driver"
author:      "Hugh Blemings <hugh@misc.nu"
license:     "GPL"
parm:        debug int, description "Debug enabled or not"