PICkit2 and programming EEPROMs

[Neganur]

I spent some time trying to figure out how this EEPROM programming feature with the PICkit works.
I do have a programmer for serial EEPROMs but kind of like the way the PICkit standalone application works, and would consider buying the older PICkit2 in order to shelf my old programmer (parallel port) in favor for a simple USB device. PICkit3 doesn't seem to have this feature.

I didn't find any satisfying answers on google or Microchip's own forum.
Is this feature only available in the command line tool PK2CMDv1-20 for the PICkit2?



I don't actually own a PICkit2 so the GUI application has the Device Family list omitted as shown in the screenshot below (the PICkit3 standalone software does the same until a programmer is attached).



MPLAB v8.66 doesn't seem to support this at all as seen in the picture below:



Does anyone have any experience with this? Do you use your PICkit2 to program serial EEPROMs?

[ivan747]

You can do a simple EEPROM programmer. Check out the Bus Pirate. It can communicate using multiple protocols. I have a PICKit 3 and I want to do this too, as well as using it as a serial terminal and maybe even a logic analyzer. If they had open source libraries and a rock solid bootloader on the PK3 I'm sure the community would have implemented all of this in weeks.

[Neganur]

Hm, the source for both the firmware and the application is available for PICkit2.
With MPLAB-X being based on an open-source framewrok (and it supports PicKit3) maybe there's still hope.
Why can I select serial EEPROMs in MPLAB if none of the programmers supports them.

Thanks for mentioning the BusPirate, I happen to have one and programming an EEPROM works fine with flashrom v0.9.1- r905 for Windows.

Apparently only the command line application allows you to program serial EEPROMs with the PICkit2. What a shame - the GUI standalone looks much nicer.