I wanna experiment with the dspic33f series, but I can’t find any good DIY programmer schematics (let alone software). Does anyone know about any I might have missed?
I was thinking, since I’ll be going with the official Microchip toolchain (C30) and MPLAB IDE, I might just get a PICKIT2. Does anyone have any experience with these programmers? They seem very handy, especially as I have no serial or parallel ports on my new comp…
What, is it taboo to use the official dev tools or something?
Well screw all of yas - I bought one anyway, and it works really well. Nyah 
Sweet 
Thanks for letting us know man. I’d heard they worked OK…but I wasn’t confident enough to tell you to spend money on it heheh
sorry, I’m late again.
It happens to often, they will probably put it on my headstone:
Here lies the late LyleHaze.
Yes, the little PICKit2 is the most bang for your buck that you’ll ever find. And it’s small enough to wear it as jewelry.
The only thing better than a PICKit2 is a good bootloader, especially if it is run by MIDI. 
Have fun, and tell us what you build with the DSPic!
LyleHaze
well I figured since it’s only like £25 I didn’t have much to lose. Except perhaps my soul to microchip (It feels really strange using the official PIC dev tools, I’ve only ever used homemade programmers for ~8 years)
Microchip supply schematics for it, and people have designed PCBs so you can make your own pickit. I believe there is linux support for it, too. (but not for dsPICs…)
And I’ll be sure to post details of the project when it’s semi-working.