Yeah I am not sure. Only reason I threw that out there as a scenario is because he was talking about 200 mhz and 800 mhz machines and I figured it could be he is using an older OS. I have always used ME up until now because it seemed to work well for me. Lately I have found it...well..its getting outdated with some of the stuff I am trying to do. So I figured I'd join the masses and go XP. The change solved the problem, so hey..you never know. Even the readme file says the older ones should work, but are not recommended. I am not a computer guru and getting this stuff even working is a miracle in itself. Now that I think about it, I had a question. I made a 3 unit LED module for my display controller. I plug it in and I get all 0's. I am going to go do some hunting but I thought for some reason it was supposed to be dashes or something, or is that normal. I dont have it assigned to anything yet. Just got it up and running about 10 minutes ago. Slow but sure progress :)Jason

Yep, plus it's worth the try to attempt flashing on the fastest machine. I dont know what processor speed you need in practice, but I have heard a few people say it worked when they finally tried on the fast machine instead of the "workshop PC"..Tuomas

If it is worth anything, I finally got it to work with my Athlon XP 2600+. Prior to that I had tried with a Athlon XP 1800+ and it didn't work. It still has ME on it though, so I assume maybe if I upgraded the OS it would be more then sufficient to flash the PIC. I know someone mentioned motherboards. In the 2600 I have an Asus A7N8X series mobo in the 1800 ECS K7VTA3.Jason

JasonYou are right assuming I'm not on XP. The PCs I've tried with has all been Win98SE machines. I will try it with my P4/2.8/XPHome machine.I have been busy this weekend but tonight I will give it a new try as per all the latest tips and trix given in this thread.Thanks all!! Really appreciated. Will keep you posted :-wave

Cool. Lets us know if anything changes. Nothing worse then building all that stuff then find out you can't flash the thing. Thats what I thought my problem was after I measured the voltages and everything was right on. Couldn't figure out what was going on. Good luck man.Jason

Well, here's an update on my story of woe... lol But with a happy ending it seems.I first checked my multimeter (an analog one) against a fresh alkalic battery. Gave me 1.60V so I'm assuming my multimeter is showing correct values.I then hooked up the 7805 stripped with only the 220 my and 100 nano caps on the input side and the 10 my cap on the output on a experiment board. Didn't make any difference in voltage after taking away 10my, 220 my and last the 100 nano cap. Still had 4.5VLast thing I tried was hooking up my COM board to my 2.8GHz comp with WinXP Home and voil

Sweet man, thats a good deal.Jason Tighe

Congratulations! Now the fun can begin ;)Regards,Pedro

I've been monitoring this thread from the start.I'll be getting into that situation soon I hope... Oh.. no... I don't actually... I hope everything will go OK... ;-)Now, regarding the COM, it must be OS related. Win98 and prior systems sometimes 'ignored' the COM I/Os until something live was connected to them. Like a modem for example. WinXP on the other hand is better in this case. It loads the drivers for serial ports anyway!George DorkofikisAthens, Greece

Congrats!Mikewww.mikesflightdeck.com

Hi,Interesting story!And again, it was a pc problem. Some backgrounds:The COM connection button shows an inactive COM port, if a local open of com interface doesn't succeed. No matter of what you have or have not connected. In many cases, another programm has this com port opened.In flash mode, no usart shift registers and timing is used. Anything is generated by setting individual port bits via Microsofts API. There are a few critical timings with a min and a max values in micro- and milliseconds. The only timing info from OS is the GetTickCount() API which returns milliseconds, but since Windows isn't a real time os, that is a bit unreliable.Maybe, the problem is very easy to fix, but it is hard to find. At first I need a pc, which shows the problem.regards Dirk

>Maybe, the problem is very easy to fix, but it is hard to>find. At first I need a pc, which shows the problem.Maybe one could set the FSBUS router process priority to higher during the flashing process if there is a problem? I dont know if it helps, as windows indeed is not a realtime OS, but it might just make the difference so it could be worth trying as a last resort. At least do not run any other programs (especially Flight Simulator :)) while you attempt to flash.Most often the problem is a shorted connection somewhere on the board though so checking the soldering work is important also.Tuomas

I noticed that when troubleshooting, you removed some components? Just a thought here, but, I seem to remember something about certain capacitors being polarity sensentive. I thought that it was tantulum. Anyone else hear of this? If so, this would definitely cause undesirable voltage problems.If you removed them, then reinstalled them opposite, you could have unknowingly corrected the problem.

Well, if you swap tantalum or elecrolytic capacitor pins by accident. You usually find it out with lound bang.They will explode when soldered wrong way. Not everytime, but usually.- J

Ahh, you are right about what happens when connecting caps the wrong way. The components I removed when trouble shooting was the transistors and ICs also the voltage regulators. Regards,