PIC Micro Programmer

The idea of programming small micro-controllers has been an interest of mine for a long time. Microchip makes a number of small micro-controllers, and after some studying on the topic, my target chip had become the 16F628A. This chip has 8 I/O pins, plenty of program memory for a guy like me and is in a small package (18-DIP).



After doing some research and a failed attempt to make a programmer kit that came with a book I purchased from Barnes and Noble, I decided it was time to make my own. I found a simple programmer developed by Byron Jeff - the Trivial Low Voltage Programmer (TLVP). Here is my version of that programmer (which works well).



The programmer uses a 9V batter and a LM7805 voltage regulator as a supply power to the 74HCT573 Octal D-Type Latch. This chip is used to buffer the data from the PC's parallel port to the target micro-controller chip. I put the components on a perf-board and added a switch to turn the power on and off.