Electronic – Is it possible to use an opamp to generate 13V VPP for ICSP

This page has the circuit diagrams, C code, and compiled windows executable for using ISP to program a PIC. The (windows) software is different form the AVR software, so maybe it is just a cheap way to program PICs. Certainly cheaper than $1200.

http://elm-chan.org/works/avrx/report_e.html (near the bottom)

The first thing for debugging something like this is to verify you really did enter programming mode. The most reliable way is to use high voltage program mode entry. Make sure the PGM pin is held low during this time. Also make sure all power and ground pins are connected, whether you think you are using them or not, with a bypass cap on each power pin.

To verify you entered programming mode, shift in something that should drive PGD, like the read back of TABLAT instruction (0010). Follow this with 8 zero bits, then on the next rising edge of PGC the target chip should switch to driving PGD from it being high impedance previously.

Once that is working, the next thing is to read the device ID since that is always a fixed known value. This is more complicated since you have to exectute core instructions to load the three bytes of TBLPTR, then do a read.

Since all these interactions are synchronous and you own the clock, you can go as slow as you want and observe everything on the scope one piece at a time.

It would help if you describe exactly what you think your process is of trying to perform these operation. No, I'm not going to look arduino code. There is too much between that and the PGC and PGD lines.