[iambujo]

We had success with it today as well. I used winpic to program the chip with a custom serial cable I made late last night based upon a whole lot of googling and research. I too erased before programming to get it to work. For teams in need of doing this that don't have fancy PIC programming hardware or time to order some, attached is the harness schematic I made. I used a PC serial port (and not a laptop) because most of what I read said that the laptop voltage levels are not high enough on the serial port to program it.

Best of luck to everyone. NOTE - I take no responsibility if it does not work for you, damages your IR board further or the PC you use to program it. I can promise it worked flawlessly for me. Just in case, I would not have the IR board connected to your main robot controller while programming the board; in the event there is a problem, it won't hurt your robot.