Tiny bootloader

[misperry]

I have a problem that I have been running into for a while. I have a PIC16F886 chip that I am coding and I cannot for the life of me get the Tiny bootloader to work properly. Here is what happens, let me know if this is weird or what:

Program bootloader to chip. Place chip in circuit. Plug in serial cable and press CheckPic. All goes well and it can see it and everything is fine. I press write and the program uploads to the chip and the chip runs the program.

Now here is where it gets tricky. Once the program is sent to the chip it now does not see the chip anymore from the PC software. Also, when you press Check it should reset the chip. But it doesn't. I have tried removing the RTS line from the chip and just putting a pull up 1k ohm resistor with a manual reset switch to pull it down to a logic zero and that doesn't even work.

Now to make things even more complicated, if I flash via a programmer, the program only, not the bootloader, over to the chip and put it in place a manual reset works just fine.

Talks about weird.

If anyone knows what could possibly be going wrong with this I would love to know. I am at the end of my thinking and I am now giving up and asking for help.

Thanks so much for any comments that anyone may have.

[misperry]

Bump

[PCM programmer]

Wouldn't it be easier to use Google to search for Tiny Bootloader and
the error message ? Example:

[misperry]

Well, I looked into google and I have exhausted my search. All the ones that come up are talking about just getting the two to talk at all. Mine does find the pic but I have to power cycle the entire unit and very quickly and upon power up click check pic or write flash on the tiny bootloader software for it to find the chip and load stuff to it.

This is really weird. Do you have any sample code / schematics to share? I am just at a loss (he he).

Thanks so much for your help