[rescue] Parallel ports [was Re: Slightly OT: ?Bad Cap Saga]

[Peter Corlett]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 11:43:16PM -0700, Curious George wrote:
[...]
> Most (many?) modern devices are now flash based. Programming is often done
> via funky serial algorithms and/or just cramming data onto pins of the
> chip, etc. (which means you need a parallel port on a PC... <wink> )

You can also do it with a bit-banger on the serial port, essentially by
repurposing the flow control signals as GPIO pins. That's more or less the
only thing that a USB serial dongle can't do, but it's rather a dodgy kludge
to use the serial port for that in the first place.

Indeed, I actually just found such a "serial" 16F84 programmer in my junk
box when looking for some stuff this morning. It has a certain elegance in
how few components it requires. But I've got a "real" PIC programmer
somewhere as well. (Which, *sigh*, uses a bit-banging parallel port so won't
work on my Mac.)