The paper summarizes the experiments performed with ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) on ASDEX, from November 1984 until March 1986; the most interesting results are reported and discussed in detail. Heating and confinement studies using the hydrogen second harmonic scheme and the hydrogen minority scheme (PIC < 2.6 MW, tIC < 1.5 s) show a typical L-mode behaviour, i.e. a power dependent confinement degradation, which is rather similar to that found with neutral beam injection (NBI) heating. ICRH is accompanied by a slightly improved particle and energy confinement compared with that of NBI; this is also true for a combined ICRH + NBI scheme, up to Ptot ≈ 4.5 MW, absorbed in the plasma. Particular efforts have been devoted to investigations of the second harmonic regime in H/D plasmas with nH/ne ≈ 0.1 - 1, with a view to heating mixtures in reactor relevant plasmas. The achievement of H-mode transitions with ICRH alone in the hydrogen minority scheme at an absorbed RF power of about 1.1 MW supports the assumption of common confinement properties in auxiliary heated tokamaks, since they appear to be widely independent of the additional heating method. ICRH specific impurity problems, such as the strong release of iron from the vessel walls, have been overcome by applying extensive in situ wall carbonization. The mechanisms responsible for impurity generation have partly been identified and analysed; however, the problem still remains to be solved. Impurities preferentially released from the ICRH antenna do not pose problems.