26 Jan
2012
26 Jan
'12
9:48 p.m.
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 4:05 PM, Mr Ian Primus <ian_primus at yahoo.com> wrote:
If you only care about stuff from about the mid
80's on up, then you should have absolutely no problem with a modern, inexpensive
programmer. But once you start needing to deal with anything older (2532, bipolar PROM,
etc) the support can get sketchy.
I do need to occasionally burn bipolar PROMs, and I _definitely_ need
to program 2532s (for PETs).
I also need to program new, massive EEPROMs and GALs and microcontrollers.
I have and use multiple programmers. I don't know of one device that
handles every device I have burned in the past 10 years.
I look at the "modern" USB-only Windows-only programmers the same way
I look at my vintage ISA-interface, DOS-only programmer - "Oh, look..
a tool that will become "obsolete" before I'm done needing to use it,
forcing me to forever run whatever they call a computer today". There
may be USB ports in 20 years, but I doubt that a Windows application I
buy today will run natively in 20 years. Interfaces tend to stick
around longer than application platforms. I have a dedicated device
programmer machine that doesn't get updated now, and I predict I'll
have one long into the future.
OTOH, I have the source for the download app for the EPROM emulator I
use, so as long as I can stuff bits down a pipe at 9600-N-1 from a
machine with a C compiler, I should be able to use that to emulate
JEDEC EPROMs. It runs on VMS, it runs on DOS, it runs on UNIX. I
think I'm set there.
-ethan