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Ask Slashdot: Best EEPROM Programmer For a Hobbyists?

Posted by Soulskill on from the getting-technical dept.

BigSes writes "I had been in the amusement repair industry (video gaming, pinball, jukeboxes, etc) for more than a decade, but have recently taken a new career path. I still greatly enjoy tinkering with all the electronics, and collect many arcade games and pinball machines for my home. I always had access to EEPROM / PROM / PIC / GAL programmers on the job, but never owned one personally. I'm finding it difficult to work within my chosen hobby without one, and ordering pre-programmed chips can be cost prohibitive for some projects. I would love it if some of you professionals or other hobbyists out there could recommend a great programmer that supports a large number of chip formats for me to use. I'd like it to be something USB, more modern than Serial or Parallel port (usually what we had in the old days) and preferably sub-$300, new or used. There are tons of Chinese import types on eBay, but I'd hate to spend $80+ if I am unsure of the quality."

23 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Dont call them Programmers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Call them EEPROM Software Engineers ;)

    1. Re:Dont call them Programmers by TeknoHog · · Score: 2

      I also think it is much more geeky to say "I design microchips" than saying you program (give instructions to) chips that somebody else designed.

      But that sounds more like doing the hardware design of the chip.

      When you code FPGAs, you design electronic circuits at the gate level. I think that counts as hardware design. Besides FPGAs, the same design can be fabbed into real ASICs, and often the FPGA is simply used to prototype things before such production.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  2. Cheap Chinese ones are fine by raburton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I bought one several years ago (Top2048, don't think it's a current model now). Forget what it cost but probably in the region of 100 USD. Build quiality is good. Software isn't great or well translated, but at the end of the day it does what it's supposed to. In terms of writing eproms I've never had any problems with it. Ultimately writing an eprom isn't a particularly difficult concept so I see no reason a Chinese factory can't mass produce a cheap a programmer. Or put another way, why on earth do branded ones from the West cost so much money? Richard.

    1. Re:Cheap Chinese ones are fine by Miamicanes · · Score: 2

      That's not quite true. Chinese companies over the past 10 years have been carving out a new market category for themselves -- things that are dirt cheap due to sheer unfathomable economy of scale and large-scale ASIC design. When your domestic economy *alone* has more than a billion consumers who, due to language, aren't terribly thrilled by foreign (ie, English-oriented) alternatives to begin with, you can hardly help but become very good at cranking out millions of products. Look at phones. Companies like Huawei have more real customers within 500 miles than Motorola and Nokia would have if they owned 100% of their respective (American & European) markets in their entirety.

      Yes, Chinese companies copy. So did Japanese companies. So did American companies, for that matter (back in the 1800s, European nations were perpetually up in arms about cheaply copied goods from America flooding their markets). The point is, if you focus on the copying too much, you're likely to miss the REAL long-term threat presented by Chinese companies to America and Europe -- their unbelievable potential for vertical integration and unbelievable economy of scale that will keep them competitive LONG after workers in Chongqing are making wages comparable to workers in Tennessee.

    2. Re:Cheap Chinese ones are fine by Genda · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What you've all ignored is that China is exploding into cutting edge technology, cranking out Phds like they're going out of style. Last year they produced more international patents than America. They're building both a huge industrial manufacturing infrastructure as well as a huge and growing intellectual leadership. If they couldn't produce quality work, then the bulk of American and European industry wouldn't be using them to manufacture their products, no matter how cheaply they can produce (can you say Apple, Gucci???)

      Face it kids, they are perfectly lined up on a trajectory to take a leadership role in global production through the rest of this century. They will eclipse the American economy some time in the middle of this decade. They are already the third largest global consumer of luxury items. You better believe that businesses everywhere are going to pander to a market with a billion and a half buyers.

      As stupid as their government is, it has the advantage of moving in a monolithic manner. So once a decision if made, the nation marches in lockstep. Makes for a very impressive ability to turn the nation on a dime. The U.S. can't do that. We have other strengths, some huge, we just don't have the ability to act like that except maybe in the face of a national crisis.

      Don't assume we have anything on the Chinese, we need to put our game faces on, and play full out, because these guys are hungry and they want our lunch really bad.

    3. Re:Cheap Chinese ones are fine by lucm · · Score: 2

      > As stupid as their government is, it has the advantage of moving in a monolithic manner. So once a decision if made, the nation marches in lockstep. Makes for a very impressive ability to turn the nation on a dime. The U.S. can't do that. We have other strengths, some huge, we just don't have the ability to act like that except maybe in the face of a national crisis.

      Between Confucius and Mao not a lot of things happened in that huge country. That's a hell of a big dime they need to turn on.

      Surprisingly things are moving much faster since westerners are involved in their business. Must be a coincidence.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    4. Re:Cheap Chinese ones are fine by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      Oh, please. The same things were said about the Japanese in the 80s before their economy imploded. There is no way China can maintain a 10%+ growth rate and the growth is all that's keeping the people quiet. It's like Disco Stu's "if current trends continue, Disco music will take over the world by 1980!"

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  3. It's an obsolete technology by tftp · · Score: 2, Informative

    Very few people need EEPROM programmers these days. You, with your restoration projects, are one of few exceptions.

    I very much doubt that there is a modern design that can reliably do what you need. The problem is not in building the thing but in testing it on chips that don't exist today outside of dusty old boards.

    Your best bet is to buy an old programmer. I'd think many companies are junking this equipment left and right, so you should be able to find it in surplus stores, flea markets, on the Internet, etc. The key part is that it must be old today - and from the same century as the ICs that you are programming with it.

    1. Re:It's an obsolete technology by tftp · · Score: 2

      Flash is just EEPROM that you can't erase a byte at a time

      As I understand the OP wants a programmer that can program UV PROMs as well. The devil there is in details. Each part requires unique conditions for programming; some of them are onerous, like 15V, 1us pulses with certain rise/fall times. It takes a careful design of the hardware to be able to program those. Modern EEPROM or Flash is a piece of cake (which is a lie) compared to those old ones. Worst of all, some are OTP PROMs - which means that you burn them once and that's it. If you want to experiment with programming of those you need to have a fat wallet first. That's why it's best to defer to a good old programmer that had been not just "tested" on those parts but specifically designed to program them. I worked with programmers that supported hundreds of devices and came with several plug-in trays, each with ten different sockets (ZIF usually) for all kinds of packages.

      Some of these programmers are manufactured and sold even today, for example ALL-100. Per manufacturer's claim they support over 12,000 different parts. Note that they mention "pin drivers" - this is the key word here; it means they know what they are doing. Every pin is programmatically controlled in terms of high and low voltage, slew rate and perhaps other settings (a DAC is commonly used.) It's not trivial to make these drivers - some of them need to source and sink the full Icc of the part, which means low output impedance.

      The cost of ALL-100 is $1K. I'd say it's money well spent if you want a new programmer. As I said, an old one can be often had for a song; I got a few pieces of test equipment this way.

  4. Second hand Dataman by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    We use Dataman programmers at work, http://www.dataman.com/Products.aspx i would try and pic up and old parallel port one (new ones are usb) on ebay or second hand sites.

  5. Get a good adapter set by BennyB2k4 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've used a GQ-4X Willem Programmer with good success. The trick is to get a good set of adapters, so you have the flexibility to cover many packages. PSOP, TSOP, etc. I've even found one that lets me do a serial SOIP8 EEPROM while it is still on the board-- very handy to not need the remove&resolder.

  6. Don't give up on serial by ninjackn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't give up on the serial port. There are a large number of great USB to serial port adapters on the market and they're not too expensive either. Even if you really wanted to give up on the serial port the more modern cheaper usb chip programmers are just the old serial programmers with a FTDI chip to convert serial to usb. Even the super popular arduino uses the mentioned method. All that being said take a look at sparkfun.

    With regret I must say to give up on the parallel port. The older true parallel ports with ECP/EPP were amazing for hobbyist hackers. Throw in a few buffers and bit bang anything you could ever need out of it. Stay away from those "usb to parallel port" adapters as they are not the gloried parallel port from the olden days and are just ports meant for older printers.

    --
    [FUCK BETA 2.6.2014]
    1. Re:Don't give up on serial by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      Depending on what computer the poster is using, or willing to use for EEPROM work, you don't necessarily have to count parallel out, either.

      There are, to my knowledge, no USB->Parallel converters that are the genuine article, rather than a somewhat dodgy USB Printer class horror, and the degree to which today's "USB->Serial" converters succeed in fooling hardware or software expecting a real serial port can be pretty variable(though much better than with parallel)

      However, if your computer of choice has a PCI, PCIe, PCMCIA, or Expressport slot available, you can get a good-honest-old-fashioned serial, parallel, or combo card for comparatively little money(more than the USB dongles; but easily cheap enough to be worth it if it means getting a good deal on a programmer with an "outdated" interface)...

    2. Re:Don't give up on serial by petermgreen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There are a large number of great USB to serial port adapters on the market

      FTFY

      Most USB to serial port adaptors have lower voltages than serial ports traditionally had and afaict ALL of them have much higher latencies than traditional serial ports. These issues will cause some equipment not to work. The first issue can be solved by building your own adaptor with custom level shift circuitry but there is really nothing you can do about the second issue.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    3. Re:Don't give up on serial by Olorion · · Score: 3, Informative

      Serial ports are sloooow, especially if you have to do the programming repeatedly, such as when you are developing firmware. A USB-to-RS232 adaptor won't speed the downloading of your data, since the RS232 bottleneck is still there. Trust me, I've been there, done that (without the USB adaptor). I got really tired of transferring 64K bytes at 9600 baud every time I needed to do a bug fix.

      My company bought a true USB programmer capable of 1 megabit/s downloads, and it was a huge improvement. The device was expensive at the time ($700) but very much worth it. I won't bother telling you the name of that programmer, since you should be able to buy the equivalent for $100 or less these days.

  7. What do you want out of the device? by thylordroot · · Score: 2, Informative

    In order to address the kind of ROM programmer you need, it's helpful to know what you're looking for. Are you looking for a universal programmer, or are you willing to buy a ROM programmer that might only cover a certain class of PROMs? If you can peg down your requirements, that could potentially open a lot of opportunities up to you that you might not normally consider. It might even be possible to leverage the work of other hobbyists and roll your own, perhaps something like this. You might also be able to get a good deal on such a device through surplus.

    I have a Xeltek Superpro universal programmer that I bought a few years ago for about $500. (I know, not quite within your $300 upper bound) It was an alright investment, I guess, but I haven't really used it much. At the time I bought it, it appeared that there were only Windows drivers for it, and I didn't really have the time to write my own drivers for it at that point. The few times I did use it, however, it was a decent device. If you could find something like that within your price range, it might be worth your consideration.

  8. Spark Fun by Phibz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Spark Fun has some that are reasonably priced

    http://www.sparkfun.com/categories/1

  9. Re:Arduino by mangu · · Score: 4, Informative

    Came here to say that. The easiest way to program an EPROM today without a legacy programmer would be to put it into a breadboard and use an Arduino.

    I used to have a universal programmer like the one he wants, but it ran off an ISA card in a PC, it stopped working when my last 486 PC gave up the ghost.

    By coincidence, it was only last week that I found some old spare EPROMS for a custom-built equipment we used to have where I work. Just for curiosity, I wanted to read their content. I wired an Arduino to read them, just a few minutes work.

  10. Often still serial by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Informative

    While many think of serial as a throwback to the older ages, many of these programmers are still serial but simply feature an onboard ft232 or similar USB->USART interface. They act no differently then buying a cheap USB->Serial dongle and then working with a serial device.

    There are a few native USB options but you'll find these at a higher expense.

    As for Chinese quality, you can pretty much guarantee that regardless if you buy a $10 programmer or a $200 programmer it's going to be made in China. My experience with other programmers like those for AVR and PIC is the "Chinese inport types" can often be as good as the original manufacturer's programmer without the ludicrous markup. For the most part a programmer is nothing more than an interface that gets data from the computer, does a few simply electrical things to enable programming mode on a chip, and then spits out data in a format required. Total bill of materials is often sub $20.

    Which reminds me, if you DIY inclined with electronics maybe build your own programmer? There's tons of schematics on the net for this and it will be as cheap as the Chinese import option except that you know exactly what you're getting. Failing that SparkFun is a company that caters quite well for hobby engineers and I'd be surprised if you can't find what you need there.

    1. Re:Often still serial by Osgeld · · Score: 2

      "Failing that SparkFun is a company that caters quite well for hobby engineers"

      no they are not, they are a company who preys on noobs selling a 25 cent chip on a breakout board instead of selling the dip version for 5 bucks, or a 40$ knock off iron for the price of a hakko.

  11. TopMAX by roman_mir · · Score: 2

    I still have one, they are obsolete today! or so this says but it is a very reliable programmer, if you can get one, it's definitely going to be used and so it should be cheap maybe 50 bucks or so.

    --
    You can't handle the truth.
  12. Re:Atmel SDK by Mister+Transistor · · Score: 3, Informative

    Did you even read his entire post? He WANTS to do 1970's type EEPROMs or, actually, I suspect UV erasable EPROMs. All you people who responded "Use an Arduino!" or "Use a PIC" or whatever the hell you are recommending, completely missed the point - he wants an inexpensive, modern programmer that does OLD EPROMs or EEPROMs. Sheesh.

    --
    -- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
  13. Build one by nurb432 · · Score: 2

    If you cant build a programmer, you picked the wrong hobby.

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    ---- Booth was a patriot ----