Electronic – How to erase PIC microcontroller

microchipmicrocontrollerpicpickitprogramming

Sorry for such "noobish" question but I've tried to help my son with learning PIC programming. I load some simple asm source into MPLAB and pressed "make and program device main project". IDE build source and shot it into PIC12F629, program started, LED's were flashing as they should by source… everyone happy.

I'm an old school guy and have no idea about erasing… We tried same routine again and then we discover that we have to erase PIC to do it again?

How? (PICKIT2 programmer)

Best Answer

It sounds like you're using MPLAB X.

In general, there's no need to erase a flash-based PIC part prior to reprogramming. The IDE will take care of that for you.

If for some reason you really do need to do a manual erase, you will need to either:

  • Use MPLAB 8 (which supports PICkit2), or
  • Get a new programmer (PICkit3/PM3/ICD3/REAL ICE) and use the MPLAB X IPE program (integrated programming environment) that comes with MPLAB X.

You can install MPLAB 8 at the same time as MPLAB X, and they won't interfere (much) with each other. The PICkit2 doesn't require you to do anything fancy like run the driver switcher either (some programmers use different drivers for MPLAB 8 and X, and you need to use the driver switcher utility)

EDIT: With MPLAB X v1.7 and v1.85, you can indeed still use PICkit2 (despite Leon's comment)

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It's not 100% supported (hence the amber lights) but I've used it on a variety of PIC24 and PIC16 projects successfully.

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