4 Aug
2007
4 Aug
'07
2:42 p.m.
Thanks for all the information everyone. I'm really looking into everything
now, as far as building a computer from an off the shelf CPU such as a Z80
or 6502. One thing that has occurred to me is that I will likely need an
EPROM Burner. Where can I get such a device for a modern PC?
IMHO, more important than the EPROM programmer is an EPROM emulator. This
is a box of RAM that connectes to the EPROM socket of the target system
(the board you'be just made) and also to a host machine (PC, parallel
port, serial port, USB?). YOu can quickly download perogams into the
emulator, which then appears exactly as the EPROM does ot the target, and
the latter can therefroe run said programs.
The advantage over using EPROMs is that you can re-write the RAM as many
times as you like (EPROMS have a limited number of program cycles) and
rewrite it quickly. Unless your programming is a lot better than mine,
you will go mad if you have to wait 20 minutes for an EPROM to be erased
and reprogammed. each time you want to make a change!
There have bnen seceral desings for such devices in Elektor magazine over
the years (and I guess elesewhere). The one I put together (using the
Elektor PCB) was just a handful of TTL parts and a couple of 32K SRAMs.
It links to a PC parallel port (which downloads bytes into the RAM).
-tony