Making a PIC Programmer

Long time no post but I have decided to get into PIC programming again. The PIC websites out there are not central enough so I make a small website of my own to fix that. We'll see.

I have also decided to build this really awesome PicKit 2 Clone that can be found at Building a PicKit Clone. I Am just preparing all of the parts now for pure awesomeness.

While I was at it i discovered something really interesting. I wanted to buy the PIC18F4550-I/P from Jaycar Electronics. This is an image of their website and the price that they are selling it for (~$44):







Understandibly I thought this was a bit rich so I took a look at the microchip website and they sell it for ~5USD + ~$15USD to get it to Australia. So I could buy two microchips from America (Thailand Actually) and it would still be cheaper than buying one from Jaycar.

Edit: I contacted them and they never got back to me. As of 20 Oct 09 it is still selling for that price. You can see it here.