Old PIC robots

[keidav51]

I have several of the old PIC microcontrollers. I wanted to use them for STEM lessons with our feeder elementary and middle school students. I purchased the EASY C Pro software but I’m having problems downloading the software. I get the “To ensure download make sure the power is on and serial cable is connected” message. I have change the cables but I still receive the same message.

[tfriez]

You can also use a legacy version of ROBOTC that works only with the PIC-based Brain
https://www.robotc.net/files/download/vex/ROBOTCforVEXRobotics_363_PIC_ONLY.exe

This install should include the drivers to connect the Prolific USB to Serial Adapter.

[jpearman]

If you are using old programing cables with the Prolific USB chip, and installing RobotC for PIC does not help, have a read through this very old topic.

prolific serial drivers and bad cables

There have been more cases of old VEX programming cables apparently failing to work. The cause of many of these failures are updated prolific drivers detecting that the cables use an unauthorized version of the PL2303 serial to USB chip. About a year ago I posted information indicating which drivers have been shown to work, I’m reposting that information here and also some additional results with recent versions of ROBOTC and Windows 7. Tests were done using Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. The origina…

The prolific drivers have a very checkered history.

[keidav51]

Thank you for the information.