PIC programmers? More generic programmer? Port?

[Scott Quinn]

On Wed, 2021-03-03 at 17:15 -0500, Anders Nelson via cctalk wrote:
> I was a field application engineer for Microchip from 2008-2011,
> making
> POCs for big name customers in the bay area using 8, 16 and 32-bit
> PICs.
> 
> You will likely find that Microchip support is awful, even if their
> products are pretty neat. There was an Arduino port for PICs called
> "ChipKit" but I don't know if that's still being developed.
> 
> The PicKit 3 is decent, if pretty slow. The ICD3 and later versions
> are
> good. MPLAB X is excellent IMO. I should still hold a design partner
> discount so if you want to get some tools, contact me offline and
> I'll see
> if I can save you some money.
> 
> That all said, I'm a huge fan of the STM32 ARM devices and the
> community is
> nearly as good as Nordic, and what Atmel used to be before it was
> acquired
> by Microchip.
> 
> --
> Anders Nelson
Hmm. Well sounds like it might be better to disassemble the existing
provided PIC blobs and re-code for something else. Looks like the board
is basically MAX232 level shifters and then the PICs to change the
keyboard encoding, so theoretically any MCU should work.