How to repair PICSTART Programmer ??

[arunb]

Hi,

My old PICSTART Programmer stopped working suddenly, whenever I connect to it I get the error
'Cannot Transmit. A serial timeout has occurred, please retry the previous operation'.

I replaced the Sipex232 IC (Serial Transceiver) with a standard MAX 232 circuit containing all the standard 10uF capacitors.

Using a oscilloscope I found that pin 25 on PIC 17C44 inside the programmer goes low on selecting 'enable programmer' from MPLAB IDE.

It remains low for some time, there is no activity on TXD or RXD pins. Then pin 24 goes high from low. And the error is generated, all this time there is no activity on Rxd or Txd pins.

I also found that Rxd pin works correctly..

Kindly suggest any methods for repairing the programmer, also suggest where I can get the circuit diagram for the programmer ...

thanks
arunb

[drolleman]

contact microchip and they will replace the programmer. they are very good about it. i have had 4 icd2's replaced allready. and 1 picstart.