A while back I bought a k150 PIC Programmer (attached 1) from ebay and I was wondering if anyone else has the same one.

When I plug it in via usb port (COM7), It is registered as "Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port (COM7)" and nothing else happens.

I downloaded MPLAB X IDE and the 8-bit compiler for free from Microchips web site and installed both. I followed the tutorial for setting up a new project and set my PIC as 16F877A and when I got to the programmer setup, my programmer was'nt found as a default tool (attached 2)

Can anyone advise how I should go about seeing if the programmer is a fake because before I got it working with jalEdit and k150 ICSP and tested the PIC with LED'S.

 

I sure your programmer works fine but it's unlikely MPLAB supports it directly. The k150 can program the chip with a hex file created with MPLABX.

http://www.microchip.com/forums/m686644.aspx