Serial port and PIC programmer

Hi!

Im reading the forums and the webpage some day now, but have some questions (and difficulties).

Difficulties:

- Does the wiki contain a table of content page, or there is somewhere available all the wiki pages listed?
- Cant find some generic background info. So if someone not only want to build a reprap machine but want to understand the electronics and want to read some more is not easy to find actual links. (Im thinking at kicad tutorial, some starter soldering tutorial. like building a simple multivibrator or something. Explanation of the circuit working, etc, etc.)

Questions:

- I dont have a serial connector but a serial-usb converter (I have only a laptop). Is it possible to program a PIC via usb<->serial converter?
Is there a wiki page with some intruction to the PIC programmers, how to build it, and some more info? (like explaining the PIC architecture, etc, etc))
- Im hesitate to buy a microchip programmer (it can be programmed only through windows?), and programming through it. (via virtualbox, dont have a windows partition) OR is it somewhere a circuit which can program the PICs through usb port.

Hope, its not so boring questions...

Best regards,
Khiraly

Khiraly -

Regarding the serial USB adapter to PIC programmer, in my experience if the programmer is powered from the serial port it may not work.

As for programming via USB port, there are programmers that operate fully on USB - ICD2 is a standard one, that can also work in linux, for example. I haven't actually have an opportunity to test it, the support appears to be there.

A program you can use to program PIC chips with Linux is Piklab - although somewhat buggy, it's a fairly decent option. Originally I had tried to program the PIC via serial on a virtual machine running windows XP - with no luck. However, the USB PicKit 1 worked fine through the VM. Too bad that device only programs up to 16 pin chips.

Good luck and let us know sometime what works out for you.