The PIC16F1764 opens the 176x power-supply generation in a 14-pin package: 7 KB of flash, 512 bytes of SRAM, a 10-bit ADC over eight channels, one operational amplifier, two comparators and – the reason power engineers choose it – a programmable ramp generator paired with a complementary output generator for synchronous-buck and LED-driver stages. Two of its I/O lines sink or source 100 mA, enough to drive small loads directly. When protection is engaged, our crack protected PIC16F1764 program service recovers it from hardware you own.

Ramp constants are the real firmware

In switch-mode supplies the application code is thin and the ramp generator’s slope table is everything: it sets how the control loop compensates at light and heavy load, and it lives as constants in flash that the startup code streams into the PRG registers. A clone that preserves the program but misses those constants produces a supply that starts and then misbehaves under load transitions – the classic failure customers describe as “it runs, but not right”. Our crack protected PIC16F1764 program procedure therefore treats the analogue constants as first-class capture targets: the whole array is read in one pass, the configuration words recorded verbatim, and the bench fixture loads the clone and steps it through light-load and load-transient conditions against the donor before delivery. That comparison has caught mismatched slope constants that pure checksums would have passed. Protection on this generation is a configuration-word bit; when set it refuses external reads, and clearing it costs the bulk erase that destroys the image, so the erase never runs. The internal-layout reasoning is in the microcontroller internal storage structure analysis reference, and lawful-access framing in the unlock microcontroller embedded memory guide.

The lineage of this package explains its presence in recovery queues better than any marketing sheet. Fourteen-pin PIC12 parts powered a decade of small supplies, and when those designs were refreshed onto the 176x generation the connectors, firmware conventions and even some constant tables moved across almost unchanged. That means a recovery job here frequently pairs an old donor image with a new one, and the interesting question is which constants the manufacturer kept. We handle the pairing explicitly when customers send both generations, reporting the diff region by region.

Comparator references and the fixed voltage reference deserve explicit capture attention as well. The two comparators take their thresholds from internal DAC taps and the FVR ladder, all initialised from flash constants at startup; a clone with a subtly different threshold set trips protection circuits at the wrong points and presents as an intermittent fault that no schematic review will find. Our verification therefore records comparator trip behaviour under a swept input, not merely the registers’ nominal values, and attaches the sweep results to the delivery.

Duplication

Verified images are written into blank 14-pin parts with configuration words restored and read-back comparison on every unit, through the MCU flash EEPROM data cloning pipeline. Analysis context for larger investigations is in the MCU reverse engineering concept article.

Light-load behaviour is the other half of the verification story on supplies built around this part. Burst and skip-mode thresholds, minimum on-times and hiccup limits are constants like any other, but they only show themselves when the load is light – which is exactly where a bench test that only runs full load will declare success and a field unit will still hum, flicker or over-react to standby transitions. Our load sweep therefore includes the light end of the range explicitly, and the recorded comparison covers it.

Family links

The 14 KB sibling is on the PIC16F1765 code page, the 20-pin members on the PIC16F1768 memory recovery, and the 177x closed-loop family on the PIC16F1773 binary page.

Feedback divider ratios and op-amp gains are also linked: the application configures the amplifier’s gain registers to match the shunt and divider values the board was built with, so a clone carrying default gains measures currents that are consistently wrong by the ratio between them. Capturing the gain registers alongside the flash image is part of every recovery we run on this family.

Scope and next step

We accept only units you own or are authorised to service. Send the locked PIC16F1764 and we will confirm the package, quote a fixed fee, and return a verified program with its ramp and comparator notes.