[stmilosh]

Hi, I have an original pic v5 opcom now please forgive me if this has been asked before but I have been trawling the site and not been able to find an answer.... will this run yhe hq software or is it still only the standard opcom /vauxcom versions it upgrades and downgrades firmwares fine but would just like a definitive answer

thanks in advance and again apollogies if I have missed it on the site

You can only run the HQ software using an HQ interface, don't try running HQ software with a standard china clone interface or you could brick it.

This is just crap. If it is china clone with real PIC hardware wise it is identical to HQ clone. Using HQ software you can't brick china clone with real PIC. The only thing that you might do is screw up (HQ software actually does it when 2 bytes checksum of FTDI ID are wrong) RX/TX pin in FTDI which practically disables access to PIC (original "hacker" who created HQ clone thought that would be a "great" protection).
But solution for that is fairly simple, one just need to reflash FTDI config (MProg does the job) and voila everything works again.