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Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers?

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>I was perusing eBay recently and noticed these old Picstart Programmers going for
>about $50.  Why???!!  With an RS232 port and I'm sure limited capability, the only
>theory I have is as collector's items.

At a guess: one market for them would be people who want/need to
program certain legacy PIC chips that require a parallel interface and
(I think) a relatively high programming voltage.

The modern PIC chips use a "very few pins" serial programming
interface, and the modern batch of inexpensive chip programmers often
do not implement the parallal programming algorithm for PIC.

Another option, of course, would be to disassemble the code for the
older PICs, and port it to a modern PIC chip.  However, I suspect that
this may well be a non-trivial task in many cases - the chip pinouts
and the peripheral sets are different enough to require significant
re-engineering.

So, for people who are repairing older hardware that uses the legacy
PIC chips, or building "clones" of these devices, it may simply be
cheapest and least-hassle to buy a tube of the old parts, and an old
Picstart.

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Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? hondgm@yahoo.com - 2017-06-02 08:49 -0700
  Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Jan Panteltje <pNa0nStpealmtje@yahoo.com> - 2017-06-02 16:58 +0000
    Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? hondgm@yahoo.com - 2017-06-02 10:10 -0700
      Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Jan Panteltje <pNa0nStpealmtje@yahoo.com> - 2017-06-02 18:06 +0000
        Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? hondgm@yahoo.com - 2017-06-02 11:59 -0700
          Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Jan Panteltje <pNa0nStpealmtje@yahoo.com> - 2017-06-02 19:21 +0000
            Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? hondgm@yahoo.com - 2017-06-02 12:43 -0700
              Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Jan Panteltje <pNa0nStpealmtje@yahoo.com> - 2017-06-02 20:43 +0000
                Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? hondgm@yahoo.com - 2017-06-02 18:29 -0700
              Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Neon John <no@never.com> - 2017-06-03 11:44 -0400
                Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? hondgm@yahoo.com - 2017-06-04 04:44 -0700
          Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? amdx <nojunk@knology.net> - 2017-06-02 14:59 -0500
      Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Chris Jones <lugnut808@spam.yahoo.com> - 2017-06-04 12:12 +1000
  Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? dplatt@coop.radagast.org (Dave Platt) - 2017-06-02 10:46 -0700
  Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-06-02 13:03 -0700
    Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? hondgm@yahoo.com - 2017-06-02 18:17 -0700
      Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-06-02 19:47 -0700
        Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? hondgm@yahoo.com - 2017-06-03 03:56 -0700
          Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-06-03 11:50 -0700
          Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Kamen Lilov <kamenl@gmail.com> - 2017-06-03 12:33 -0700
    Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Jasen Betts <jasen@xnet.co.nz> - 2017-06-09 21:04 +0000
      Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-06-09 14:37 -0700
  Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? mike <ham789@netzero.net> - 2017-06-04 00:02 -0700
    Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-06-04 03:41 -0700
    Re: Why are people buying old Picstart Programmers? Don Kuenz <g@crcomp.net> - 2017-06-04 13:15 +0000

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