Adapter for tiny PICs

With Arduinos it seems that Atmel's AVRs are getting all the glory today. Personally I like Microchip's PICs more - but that is just because I have been using them for a long time and I am familiar with them and tools involved. Technically both chip families are pretty much equivalent so there is no reason to prefer either there - generally you'll go with the one you started with.

The smallest of the PICs - tiny 6- or 8-pin PIC10 and PIC12 series - are kinda fascinating. Cheap as dirt (less than 1€ in single units), and still relatively powerful, but they have some interesting quirks that can make them a bit difficult to use.

I first used these close to ten years ago (based on datecode on chips I have remaining) for a small project to control car's interior lights. After some digging I found the PICkit1 programmer I used back then. It could program PIC12 natively but PIC10 has different pinout so adapter was required, it's still attached as you can see. Not pretty but good enough.

Since I'm using PICkit 3 now, I needed a new adapter. That was simple enough build; small piece of board with headers and some wire. Black/red are the external power leads as you might have guessed. The board has headers for either 8-pin PIC10 (specifically PIC10F206) or PIC12 (PIC12F509) chip (these were the types I had available). It may a bit difficult to see in picture but both ends of the cable glued with Epoxy to withstand some minor abuse.

Bottom view. Note 100nF decoupling caps, one for each header between power pins (note that board is upside down). The board I used as base is half of a handy prototyping board I picked up at SP-Elektroniikka, a local electronics component shop.

Next; a bit more about the quirks of these fun little chips