Software UART in IC pins???

[rvalor]

Hello everybody.

I'm working with a PIC 18F4550 (44-pin TQFP). This MCU has a special ports called:
ICPGC, ICPGD useful to program the device. In my aplication I program a software serial bus in RB6 and RB7 pins so I can send device information using the program connector. The problem is I need more pins and I'm thinking in use those special pins to program the device, but... Will be possible to program a software UART in those pins???? It seems it isn't possible... any of yours have tried this????

Thank you in advance, bye¡¡

PD: Sorry for my english¡

[Ttelmah]

No.
If you look at the pin diagrams, every pin, has listed against it, everything that it can be connected to. So a pin like RB0, has:

RB0/AN12/INT0/FLT0/SDI/SDA

Showing you that this one pin, can according to chip configuration, be connected to RB0 (normal digital port), AN12 (the twelfth analog input), INT0 (interrupt), FLT0 (PWM fault input), SDI (SPI data input), and SDA (I2C data).

Now, the ICSP pins, have _no normal digital I/O function associated with them_. So you can do nothing at all with these pins, except use them for ICSP, or in circuit debugging. On the 40 pin packages, these functions require you to sacrifice I/O pins, on the 44 pin chips, the pins are separated, but the number of actual I/O ports in the chip remains the same.

You can not do anything in the way of I/O with these pins.

Best Wishes