Microcontroller development under Linux at times is still a little problematic. Many applications exist to enable compiling of C, assembly language and for programming many different microcontrollers. Here we will consider how to program Microchip's PIC family of microcontrollers.

I have found the the low-cost programmer provided in schematic form by Jaakko Hyvätti (which is based on the jdm84v23 by Jens Madsen), though slow, to be acceptable for my needs. I currently have the device working with Picprog on a breadboard, however I would like a much more solid version ;-)

Programming microcontrollers under Linux can be some what of a complicated task. The manufacturers of microcontrollers generally sell tools and provide software to program their devices, but these tools are produced only for one operating system. This operating system is not Linux...

So what is a "PIC"? Well, a PIC is a microcontroller sold by a company called Microchip. That's the short answer, the longer answer is that "PICmicro", usually shortened to "PIC" is the brand name for a family, in fact a series of families, of 8-bit RISC-based microcontrollers. RISC or "Reduced Instruction Set Computer" describes the philosophy of designing "a processor whose design is based on the rapid execution of a sequence of simple instructions rather than on the provision of a large variety of complex instructions"[1].