RFC re Willem EEPROM programmers

[Philip Pemberton]

Alexandre Souza wrote:
>    I have a beeprog from Elnec. This is the best money ever spent. Ever.

I've got a PrEPROM-02aLV from them -- and a fantastic piece of kit it is, too. 
It does just about any EPROM, most EEPROMs, and I suspect it might do serial 
EEPROMs too. Software updates are frequently uploaded, and it works flawlessly 
on every parallel-port-endowed machine I have. I've used it on XP Pro, Windows 
2000 and (in the dim and distant past) Win98. Not a single problem on any of them.

Their after-sales service is fantastic. I tried to program a really old 
Fujitsu 27128 chip, and it kept failing the Auto-ID and Device Insertion 
checks (basically, a failure on auto-ID automatically fails DI as well). Turns 
out someone entered a value in a data table wrong -- the chip ID was 2B04, and 
the software wanted 2804 (or something like that). Within a couple of hours I 
had a workaround ("do this to turn Auto-ID off") and the next software release 
(a week later) had a full fix.

Admittedly it was a rather simple bug to fix, and it only covered one chip, 
but it's nice to know the service is there. I really do fancy buying one of 
their universal (pin-driver) programmers, though I doubt the pennies in my 
'equipment and upgrades' budget will go quite that far :(

-- 
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/