Genius G540 Programmer for PICs

[DJKA]

Hi, anyone has an opinion about http://goo.gl/HdWnw programmer? Is it worth buying?
Basically, all I want is to flash PIC16Fxx MCUs and looking for really cheap but working solution... Pickit2/3 is too expensive for me.
Thanks!

[PedroDiogo]

I think most PIC16 you could just flash using a simple Parallel Port Programmer. You could just breadboard one really quick.

However I don't think, like T4P said, if you plan to do any serious work with PIC microcontrollers you should just buy a Pickit (even a clone works pretty well).

[joseph.anand]

While I built many parallel and serial pic programmers before, the first USB PIC programmer I built (way back in 2007) and really liked is the Pic Brenner 8 from sprut.de. It is way faster than either the PICKIT3 or the PICKIT2 when it comes to programming and is my backup programmer. It should be fairly easy to get it up and running on a prototyping board. But you need to have access to an existing pic programmer to burn the firmware into the PIC8F2550. The provider software for burning has good support for most 8 and 16bit PICs.
But I think getting your hands on a PICKIT 2 clone is a  better option.

[DJKA]

Thanks for your replies guys, I will try paralell "programmer" first, I don't want to waste $$ for Pickit2/3  just for a few PIC projects... Gonna have to find an old PC with working RS232 port though...