EPROM programmer on PCMCIA-> parallel card ?

Parallel ports are finicky. I would imagine that such a setup could work - but you'd need to find something that the computer can access directly without special drivers. Usually, DOS based EPROM programmer software is talking directly to the memory mapped I/O address for the parallel port (0x378). I don't know how a PCMCIA interface would work here - I've never seen it done.

Why not just plug the EPROM programmer into the parallel port on a regular computer?

-Ian
 
I wouldn't exect it to work well with most non-standard parallel port devices. Most pseudo-interfaces like that are realy made just for printers, and only really handle the data lines, while most parallel port programmers use all the status and control lines on the interface to do bit-banging...

The windows drivers that come with them can dump data to the port fine, but the assembly code that reads and writes directly from hardware ports (which don't exist with these devices) aren't going to be happy...


I guess with PCMCIA, it could map back to I/O, and since they say there's a DOS driver, it'll probably watch the LPT hardware ports and remap them to the equivalent ports on the PCMCIA card....
 
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Why not just plug the EPROM programmer into the parallel port on a regular computer?

-Ian

Because my main machine is an iMac and the laptop I have from work doesn't have a parallel port (which is weird because it does have a serial port, which I need all the time for work).

I e-mailed Syba (this card:http://www.syba.com/index.php?controller=Product&action=Info&Id=551)

and they say it will work. There are even DOS drivers for it. I think the main issue is setting the port but you can do that in the Needham software too, or you can set it in the config file for DOS.

Mark, indeed most of the PCMCIA to Parallel cards I find indicate they are for printers only, but this seems to be a more complete port. The chip(set) used is MosChip.

I'm not that deep in PC hardware anymore, but how would a relatively recent parallel port on a laptop (HP Compaq nc6120 f.i.) work ? I bet there's something "in between" controlling the port today, compared to the original old PC design.
I ask this because I do have that laptop and the programmer works (at least, I have READ Eproms so far, don't have my eraser yet to try some burning....but the software finds the programmer in DOS and so seems to work. Reading goes VERY fast and flawless.

The reason why I would prefer using my "work" laptop is that the HP has a completely dead LCD screen and so always need to hook up an external monitor. ALso the case of the LCD and main body of the laptop are cracked, so I'm not going to replace the LCD....
 
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A cheap Celeron laptop with a built in parallel port and running XP Home will work just fine. I have an old Toshiba 2.8GHz Celeron laptop just for this. I use it with a ChipMax programmer from eeTools.com.

That programmer along with ROMIDENT lets me identify most boards when I'm out on site working with folks trying to ID boards from bulk purchases.
 
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