"Cannot find the Amicus18" (Windows 8)

[kdovi]

Hi, I've been wondering whether anyone's had any success with programming the PIC on Windows 8?

I have 64bit Windows 8 and I've had no luck so far. I can program the ATMega without issues (and have had great fun doing it so far!), but when I try to program the PIC using the Amicus IDE, I get successful compilation, but then it doesn't load the program. Instead it says "Cannot find the Amicus18", If I then hit "Write" repeatedly, I get a message saying "Problem Opening Port".
As far as I can tell there does not seem to be neither an option to set the COM port withing Amicus IDE nor any log that would give me a better idea of what went wrong.
I'm worried that this might be caused by Win8 incompatiblity, but I don't have access to older versions of Windows to confirm.

I'm not too nervous about this, I'll be happily playing with the ATMega until somebody comes up with a solution .
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What I've done (I'm kind of hoping I've done something stupid and it will be easily fixed):

• Installed the Amicus IDE
• Booted into the special mode that lets you install unsigned drivers
• Plugged in the PICnDuino
• Went into the Device Manager, right clicked the newly discovered device and manually selected the driver from the Amicus IDE subfolder (I don't remember exactly what it was called but I think that I had to do it for two devices).
• Now I can see "Amicus18 Serial Port (COM6)" under "Ports (COM & LPT)" and "Amicus18 Serial Port" under "Universal Serial Bus Controllers". Both appear to be working correctly.
• Copied the example that came on the flash disk into the Amicus IDE
• Made sure that the switch is in the PIC position and hit "Compile and Program"
• Got the error

[brad]

Hi kdovi, sorry to hear you are having issues with the PICnDuino under windows 8. I have to admit that I myself have only used it under windows xp however there has been a post on the kickstarter page where someone gives info on how they were able to get it working under windows 8:

Devon Beckett on February 28
Just got mine today and it looks great! As an fyi for anyone using Windows 8, Windows automatically rejects any driver that is not digitally signed properly . However if you go into the Advanced Startup Options you can reboot with that feature disabled and it allows you manually install the drivers from the device manager. I have only tried out the ATMEGA so far but I am very impressed with it so far. Congratulations on your successful Kickstarter!

Although it seems strange that the Arduino side of things works and not the PIC. Are you able to test on a windows 7 or xp machine perhaps? maybe we could rule out that the PIC chip is faulty.

[Jorpy]

I'm running 64bit Win8 and I have the exacly same problem. The arduino side works fine after solving the problems with the unsigned drivers (it would have been the exactly same if it was a normal Arduino).
I can tell that there is some connection between the pc and PICnDuino, as the Amicus IDE says that I have a PIC18F25K20 microcontroller attached.
I'll try to test my PICnDuino on a Win7 pc tomorrow

[brad]

Okay no worries, let me know how you go

[kdovi]

I've tested my board on friend's machine (running Win7 x64) and it worked. Then I've tried his board on my Win8 PC and had the "Cannot find the Amicus18" problem.
I'm now certain that it is Windows 8 issue.

I've got it working without issues with VirtualBox using the Windows XP VHD from XP Mode. The only problem with that is that it's not technically legal for me (shhh ) even though the Microsoft site let me download it after checking that my system is genuine.
Although I've read that PICKit (like many other programmers) also doesn't work under Win8 so buying WinXP for 50 bucks while it's still available from genuine sellers might be worth it.

I would still be happy for a solution that would avoid the XP, but this works OK.

[Jorpy]

I've also tested the PIC on a Win7 machine and it works fine. I'll try to set up a virtual box as well

[brad]

I am sorry to hear that there are problems under Windows 8. To be honest it had never crossed my mind that there may have been driver issues with the latest OS. I do apologise for that. If I ever do find a solution I'll be sure to post it. If you do come up with a solution to getting it working under windows 8 could you please post as well