Thanks for your comments

 

One problem with the extremely inexpensive PicKit is that it is counterfeit. There will be a long wait, and it may not work. Then what? Do you have the experience to trouble shoot it?

The ONLY advantages of PicStart Plus are: 1) It is designed to program/read DIP devices directly; 2) It will work with some very old chips. As an alternative, I would suggest a legitimate PicKit 3/4 (available without slow shipping) and either a breadboard or or ICSP adapter boards with ZIF sockets.

If it is a one time thing with you, simply get the bread board.

But to reiterate, nothing you have said indicates the problem is with the 16F628 (or is it a 16F628A) chip.

 

Okay. Maybe from a different angle, if I isolate or unplug the PIC16F628, is there a way to simply confirm that it might still be okay? I have a DC power supply, various Multimeters, a Hantek computer scope.

 

AFAIK there is no 100% fail safe way to do that without programming hardware of some description.
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A schematic diagram of the board that it was designed for would be helpful to establish the following:

1. How is MCLR* being used? As a RESET signal or as an I/O pin?
2. How is the processor getting/making a clock signal? Internal oscillator, external crystal, ceramic resonator?
3. What behavior can we expect if chip is OK

 

For starters, do tell us the device, name and model from which the board came.

Post pictures of the board.

 

I will have to study the chip more to answer your questions. I was hoping there might be a simpler way of just checking resistance of like pins to see if there is any with a great variation but that probably will not do in such a complicated chip.

 

Okay, this is the drive board from a SportsArt treadmill. It controls the variable speed of the treadmill belt, changes the incline of the running surface, monitors the speed and has a function to soften or harden the running surface which is not used in this model but the parts are on the board.

 

Although chips are relatively robust, we don't know anything about your "multimeters." I would strongly recommend you do nothing of the sort (as in your posts #26 and 23). You could ruin the chip. At best, what do you expect to find? How will you interpret a certain resistance? A diode? A short?

Spend your time testing the board. Tell us what happened. It seems something fell on it. How much did the something weigh? If you force pins deep enough into some socket types, you can ruin the socket. In that case, it would be more productive to measure continuity between the MCU pin and the soldered pin on the board.

 

My meters are a Fluke 77 IV and a Triplett 310. This all started when the treadmill sat in the basement for some time and when the quick start was pushed the unit posted a "please wait" and then returned back to the starting screen without starting the treadmill. or giving any error statements. During inspection of the drive board we had the additional mishap of a desk lamp tipping over with the head of the lamp landing on the board and I am not quite sure where it hit. I only noticed the damaged label on the PIC16F628 chip. The lamp head is probably around a lb.

 

I think the chip is fine.
Look for the fault some place else.

 

Thanks. Will do.