DISCLAIMER: While we can guarantee that these tools are suitable for OUR purposes, we can't guarantee that they'll be appropriate for YOUR purposes. We also can't be responsible for any unintended consequences of the use of these tools. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
The PICSTART Plus Programmer from Microchip is a cost-effective universal solution to programming Microchip PIC microcontrollers. Unfortunately, the software supplied with the PICSTART Plus is slow and only runs under Windows. picp was created to operate the PICSTART Plus quickly and smoothly in a platform-independent way.
picp is a programmer's programmer, meaning that it doesn't have a fancy shmancy GUI and it doesn't try to guess as to what you really want. It has a command line interface that does exactly what you tell it to do.
Full source is offered for picp to enable compilation under a variety of platforms and to permit tailoring to specific needs. picp has been compiled and tested under Linux for the DEC Alpha and the Intel i386, and should be easily compiled under other environments. If you discover specific problems or changes required to compile under a particular environment, please send a detailed description (preferably with a working patch) to apines@cosmodog.com. Also, if it runs without change on another platform we'd like to hear about that as well, so we can claim that, too. Suggestions for improvements are also encouraged, but please bear in mind that it already does what we need it to, so we might not be all that motivated to implement any changes that don't represent significant, useful improvements.
While every effort has been taken to ensure reliable bug-free operation, only a handful of different PIC devices have been programed using picp. We cannot guarantee that it will work properly in all circumstances and with all types of PIC devices. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. If you have trouble with a particular device, please send all relevant information to apines@cosmodog.com.