This page provides some guidance if you are building an EasyProg from an official kit or from parts collected on your own. It is assumed you are building up an official bare board. If you're trying to build one completely from scratch then you're really on your own, although some of the comments below might still be useful.
We recommend you print out the board drawing and use that to find parts visually instead of the board. This will be bigger, writing won't be covered up as parts are installed, and some of the part designators were moved away from vias.
In addition, the parts locator index is useful for deliberatly finding parts. This file gives the schematic location and board location for each part. The board coordinates are in inches, which is the same units the board drawing is marked with. The schematic location is shown as a page number, and a coordinate that is always a letter and a single digit. This coordinate refers to the letters and digits in the frame around each schematic sheet. Take a look at the schematic and this should be obvious.
The directions here are only general guidelines and hints. You are expected to be able to read and understand the schematic and diagnose problems on your own. Nothing on this web page should be considered a substitute for using your own brain. In the end it's your responsibility alone to get the kit working.
Voltages are with respect to ground unless explicitly stated otherwise. The shield of the RS-232 connector is connected to ground, and is probably the easiest place to attach the ground clip of a meter or scope probe.
Disconnect the input power.
Pin 2 of IC3 should be about 9 volts. If so, the positive charge pump is working but not the negative charge pump, which starts with the voltage produced by the positive charge pump at pin 2. Suspect C13, C14, and pins 4, 5, and 6 of IC3.
If pin 2 is not around 9V, then the positive charge pump is broken. Suspect the power connections to IC3, C11, C12, and their connections to IC3.
If the LED does not light, then the main controller is not working. Unfortunately a lot of things can cause this. See page 3 of the schematic. Verify that pin 5 is at ground and that pin 14 is at 5 volts. Check that the oscillator is running. There should be a 20MHz signal on pin 15, although this must be measured with a high impedence like a 10x scope probe. Normal 1x scope probes can load the line so that the oscillator does not run even when it otherwise would.
Go to a command prompt window and enter the command:
pic_progIf everything is working, you should get a message indicating that the firmware type is EasyProg and giving the version. It will also complain that it was unable to read the device ID of the target chip, blah, blah, blah. This is normal when the EasyProg is not connected to a target circuit and nothing is in the ZIF socket.
Enter the command:
pic_ctrl -vdd 5and measure the voltage at the Vdd pad at the right edge of the board just in front of the RJ-12 connector. The LED will start flashing and the voltage should be 5 volts. Depending on firmware version, this may only last about 5 seconds and the LED will stop flashing and the voltage will go back to 0 volts. Try a few other values in the range of 0 to 6 to the -VDD command line option. The voltage should go to the specified value, at least for about 5 seconds.
Now enter the command:
pic_ctrl -vpp 13and measure the voltage on the Vpp pad next to the Vdd pad. It should be about 13 volts. Just like Vdd, this may only last 5 seconds. Only values of 13 and 0 are legal on the -VPP command line option when using an EasyProg.
Enter
pic_ctrl -offto make sure that the programmer is in its normal quiescient state before proceeding to the next step.
pic_progIt should identify the PIC and its silicon revision, in addition to the programmer firmware type as "EasyProg" and its version, and the elapsed time for the operation.
