Recommendation for a PROM burner

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Sun Mar 15 10:38:25 CDT 2015


Thanks to everyone who responded!

I decided, after a look at the manuals, and on eBay, to go with the
23B/Unipak2B combo; it seems like it is likely to cover most things
I want to do, and was available, something I could hook up to, etc, etc.

A few points:


    > From: Jon Elson

    > You won't find ANYTHING that supports 1702 devices, they needed 80 V to
    > program.

I checked, and the 29B/Unipak2B combo does not support them. Does anyone
know if DEC used 1702s in anything PDP-11?

Are there any other early PROMs I'm likely to run in PDP-11's that are also
going to be difficult to deal with?


    > From: Roe Peterson

    >> What about the modern TL866? Anybody has experience with these?

    > They are fairly decent units, but can not handle 68764/68766 EPROMS,
    > which you might need for pdp11 systems.

Well, I don't know about for PDP-11s, but the very first thing I'm going to do
with it is blow EPROMs for a diagnostic ROM pack for my Tek 1240's, and those
take 68764/68766's (or equivalent). So that one was out, for me. (BTW, what's
the difference between the two? Looking at the data sheets very quickly, they
seemed to be pretty much the same?)


    > From: Chuck Guzis

    > Do you need program the old 3-rail EPROMs? (e.g. 2704, 2708)?

I have no idea what PROMs I will, over time, want to blow. I know of a couple
of applications right off the bat (BDV11s, which I guess take a large range
of things), and the afore-mentioned Tek 1240 ROM pack, but in the long run, I
don't really know what I'll want to do with it. That's why I said I was
looking for something that could do a wide range of early stuff.

	Noel


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