p. Getting PIC32 program executive up and running!

Program executive (PE) is a piece of temporary program code that resides PIC32 RAM and may greatly speedup it’s programming. It is also possible to program the microcontroller without it, but it takes a way too much time. There are of course other tricks, but this is certainly the most important one to limit the overhead communication between programmer and PIC32 microcontroller.

The first and most important question is how to get the PE code. If you an assembly language expert, you can write your own PE. If you are not, or if you prefer not to spend a few days working on it and perfecting it, there is another option. Use SVLIB_PIC18F24J50 v3.3.NET4(x64).dll or later from Downloads section that already has an inbuilt PE download function together with the required PE code.

PIC32 microcontroller runs at 8 MHz in test and debugging mode. Therefore it needs some time to start the PE after the PE loader finishes downloading its code to PIC32 RAM. If you start sending fast data transfer commands too soon, it may not start at all and you would end up with undefined values on memory locations where PE should reside.

When you finally get the delays to the optimal values and PE running, the only think that remains is to feed data to it and it will automatically program the PIC32 flash RAM.

Click on the screenshot to enlarge it.