Commercial use of PIC chips found!

Community General Discussions
1

So since I'm the only "electronics geek" in my family, I recieve a bunch of old cellphones/radios/computers/etc. to pillage and salvage parts.

My mother owns a tanning salon that has a networked controller for each tanning bed. One of these room interfaces stopped working, and instead of calling me to check it out, she just replaced it and gave me the broken module.

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I could definitely tell I was going to get a cool two 7 segment display. I wanted to know what other "goodies" I would find so I flipped it over.

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Ooh, some jumpers, a limiter, some caps....

Wait... what is this?!?!?

tan.jpg

A PIC chip!

I can't tell which one it is, because the sticker over it has stuck to the chip, I'm hoping to get it cleaned up and identified.

 

I guess that means I need to learn how to program a PIC chip now!

2

I have a old mouse that had
I have a old mouse that had a PIC16C55(somthingish) in it.

3

PICs are used in all sorts

PICs are used in all sorts of commercial devices. Unfortunately, the chip on that board probably can’t be reprogrammed. Most shops blow the programming fuses of microcontrollers, so that you cant try to get the program off of it and reverse engineer it. Unfortunately, this also means the PIC cant be reprogrammed again. You could probably replace it with a new chip though.

-Fergs