Velleman Microcontroller (Surplus) old board, thoughts?

[edy]

Hi folks,

I noticed this board being sold at a hardware (tools/surplus) shop in my area called "Princess Auto". Here is the link:

http://www.princessauto.com/en/detail/microcontroller-programmer-and-experiment-board/A-p8622433e

I've attached a picture of the box. On sale for $12.99, normally $19.99. However I noticed it uses an RS-232 interface... my computer doesn't even have that. It also requires 12 VDC to run. Is this just obsolete? How useful is it? I wonder what software it comes with, whether it is ancient and if it is even supported/documented.

I'm thinking it is not even worth $12.99, to be honest.

[Ian.M]

For what its worth:
I bought the assembled version and found the Velleman K8048 to be flaky enough to be mostly unusable under Windows with its OWN SOFTWARE!   Fortunately I had an intermittent power socket that only made good contact if held to one side with a lump of bluetack - a problem I could have solved with one touch of a soldering iron - but after wrestling with it for a week, I was glad to return it 'with cause' for a full refund, and the bad socket was a good excuse that did not involve complicated explanations to the 'shop-droid'.

The k8048  is limited by a total inability to control Vdd during programming so ANY PIC that has been programmed with /MCLR disabled can NOT be reprogrammed with it.  Even a JDM programmer is preferable.  The only software that I could find at the time to it usable under Windows is DL4YHF's WinPic which is extremely powerful,  has a nice GUI and can be configured to drive just about any dumb bitbanged programmer including JDM, COM84 and the various Tait 'Classic' variants - any of which are vastly preferable to the K8048!

WinPic is no longer in active development (though it is fairly simple to add new PICs to its device file) but an open source programmer software called WxPic that is based on it is.

For the rest of it, its an expensive way to get a very substandard demo board that you have to assemble yourself.

Overall rating:  Sucks Cantaloupes through a hypodermic!

[marshallh]

I built that exact kit in 2003 to burn PICs with. It burned PIC16F627 which was fairly new then.

It's a flaming POS

[macboy]

If you really want to get into PIC, get a cheap PICKit 3 clone. Watch out for PICKit 2 clones, many do not support lower than 5 V VDD. Look for a PICKit 3 clone with full device support or claiming to be 100% identical to the Microchip one. The one I have even cloned the plastics (it says Microchip on it but isn't), and works fine. PICKit 3 is the currently supported programming and debugging tool that supports nearly every PIC made today and many discontinued ones that supported ICSP.

[edy]

I found "Radioshack" stickers on the packages for these Velleman boards, they were all in the surplus section of the local hardware store. I've noticed a few more at other stores. I think when Radioshack liquidated all their stuff, it ended up in various places which picked it up for pennies on the dollar.

They'll rot in those stores for probably months until they realize they better dump them for pennies as well.