As the name suggests, dsPIC33FProg.py is a simple programmer for the dsPIC33F family of chips. It was written due to a lack of free software for this task, and is designed for use with a single-resistor parallel port programmer, although any programmer could be supported with little difficulty.

Programmer

dsPIC33FProg.py was written for a crude parallel port programmer, consisting of 4 wires and a resistor. The wiring is as follows:

parport pin	parport pin name	PIC pin
7	D5	MCLR
8	D6	CLK
9	D7	SD via a resistor
10	ACK	SD
18	GND	GND

Parport pins 9 and 10 are connected by a 1k resistor, with the PIC SD pin connected to pin 10.

Quirks

• This program is incredibly basic. It does very little error checking - use at your own risk! I take no responsibility if you fry your expensive development board with this program.
• This program uses a mixture of 24-bit ints and LSBit-first bit-strings to represent binary codes (if you want to hack about with it).
• I removed all the delays since it made it faster - it seems a parallel port is sufficiently slow that it doesn't bother the dsPIC.
• Won't work with dsPIC30Fs - they're subtly different (as I discovered, to my cost!)
• Turns out you need to to pull MCLR high for the chip to run (if only they told you in the documentation).

Download

Released under the GNU GPL.

dsPIC33FProg-0.2.zip (21k)