Anyone used the Olimex ICD2 (PIC ICD2 clone)?

[TechieTX]

Yeah, it's poignantly funny now that there's a thread on the PICKit4 here, but I'm a fan of robust old tools.  Stuff that breaks itself: not so much.

https://www.olimex.com/Products/PIC/Programmers/PIC-ICD2-POCKET/

I bought a clone PICKit3, and although it acts exactly like a real one (even has a semi-bogus serial number inside), the darned thing has bricked itself TWICE and needed to be stripped naked and reloaded the hard way.  I'm not a real happy camper about that, so I'm looking at different, hopefully more bulletproof options.  I'm old-school, and considering a PICKit2 or similar debugger / programmer due to it's long time in the saddle.  With the lousy luck I've had recently on pitiful Chinese clones of old designs, I'm not going to waste a second buying one of those $8 wonders from eBay unless I'm certain that it's truly a decent clone with all features intact, and I can't tell by looking at eBay; just because someone has sold 600 of 'em doesn't mean they actually *work*.  I don't know anything about the Olimex ICD2, and was hoping someone here could respond with "yay"  or "nay"     

Edit:  if you don't know anything about the ICD2, do you know if any of the clones in the photo are worth buying?

I've worked with a wide variety of microcontrollers over the years, but never had a need to dip my toes into the PIC pool.  I've seen 'em in a bunch of extremely low-power designs that I've pulled apart, but never needed one on the job.  I'm playing around at home to see if I can do more than make an LED blink.    All of the playing around I want to do I can handle with the older 16F and 18F devices, so I don't have any need for the bleeding-edge tools.  I'd be perfectly happy with a genuine PICKit2 if I could get one at a reasonable price.

Thanks for looking!

[ericasdf]

I have not used Olimex PIC stuff, but I have used some of Olimex other programmers for ATmega and NXP ARM processors. The worked as advertised, but wouldn't say they were awesome or fast. Also have used some of Olimex dev boards and they work fine.

But at this point the ICD 2 and PICKit 2 are not being updated so they do not work on newer PIC processors. For the long term you are probably better off just buying a real PICKit 3 or 4.

[ChuckDarwin]

I used the full sized (non-pocket) Olimex ICD2 for a few years and it was rock solid with an external power supply.  There was a small programming adapter cable you could make for the ICD2 to get support for some of the, then, newer chips, but chip generations and the dev tools outpaced the device.  If you are content with an old dev environment and older chips, it would be worth a few bucks.  If you want to spend some more, I think a PK3 or ICD3 (once the ICD4 gets traction) would be better investments, partly in that they are supported by newer dev environments.  You might also be able to find some of the dev/eval boards, such as the curiosity, with on-board programmers cheap.  No idea on the flexibility or robustness of those boards.

https://www.olimex.com/Products/PIC/Programmers/PIC-ICD2/

[Vasi]

What pic micro are you using frequently and under what operating system?

[TechieTX]

As I'd mentioned, I'm a newbie at PICs, an old hand with other micros.  I have a handful of different parts (mostly 16F and a couple of 18F), and a full tube of 16F628a because it looked like a very popular micro.  The local electronics store doesn't have a good selection of PICs. 

I downloaded the MPLabX and it was a mess (too many problems the first week), so I downgraded to MPLab 8.92, running on Win7 Pro.

Some of the newer parts like PIC16F18446 look interesting, but for the moment I'm satisfied with the older families.