[fpc-devel] Is target mips-embedded possible / planned?

[Michael Schnell]

If you install some software on the target for self-programming, you of 
course can use any (serial) interface to transfer the user software and 
burn it into the Chip's Flash. That way an USB-to-serial Adapter 
providing async, SPI and/or I²C offers perfect speed. (As the serial USB 
Adapter you can use the PICKit hardware which is rather cheap and comes 
from Microchip pre-programmed with the appropriate firmware as "Serial 
Dongle" or similar.

Of course you can't (easily) do debugging via such a serial interface. 
here using the debug hardware built in the chip seems much more 
appropriate.

The debugging (and "hardware" Flash programming) pins of the PIC chips 
are not necessary handled in a "bit-banging via USB" mode. The ICD-3 
Adapter (but supposedly not the PICKit) uses internal intelligence here 
and the image to be programmed is transferred in blocks of bytes via USB.

-Michael