Re: gEDA-user: Re: How to program PAL/GAL?

[Andy Peters <devel@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 14, 2007, at 5:07 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On Mar 14, 2007, at 8:01 PM, Andy Peters wrote:
> > We had a 2900 at my last job.  I hadn't seen one since my first  
> > job out of college, where I used one to program Altera MAX7192  
> > parts.  The magic adapter cost like $500 (in 1992 dollars).  The  
> > stupid floppy disk on the thing kept failing for no reason, and  
> > Data I/O charged boo-coo bucks to fix it.
>
>   That's why I maintain my own equipment.  My 2900 had a dead  
> floppy drive when I bought it.  I replaced it with one from the  
> closet and it has worked great ever since.

At the time, I worked for a Big Defense Contractor (hey, I was young  
and stupid), and the thing was under a repair contract.  If it broke,  
a call was made and it got fixed.

> > Anyways, the 2900 at the last job.  It sat on a work table, turned  
> > off and collecting dust, for the entire four years of my tenure  
> > there.  When the New Corporate Overlords decided to close our  
> > office, it was one of the things I packed up and sent to the  
> > California office, where I'm sure it's sitting in a corner,  
> > collecting dust.
> >
> > I hope I never see one of those fscking things again.
>
>   ...because it gave you so much trouble, sitting there collecting  
> dust. ;)  I *use* mine several times per week, have for years, and  
> it is 100% perfect...Every single time.

Well, once we migrated to ISP devices, its reason for living went  
away.  It may have even still worked, and we had tubes of 27C256 and  
27C512 EPROMs laying around, but we didn't need it.

> > Gimme a JTAG dongle and in-system-programmable parts any day over  
> > UV-erasable ancient crap.
>
>   So, in your world "Data I/O 2900" somehow implies "UV-erasable"  
> and "ancient"?  You are making grandiose negative statements about  
> something that you clearly don't know a whole lot about.  (and I'm  
> not trying to sound like a prick here...just being honest)

Honestly, yes, it does imply ancient to me.  I do know that Data I/O  
still sells programming tools, and I know that you can program a lot  
of modern devices on a 2900, and I also know that if you're doing  
huge production runs, you'd have things programmed (even ISP devices)  
before stuffing on some big Data I/O rig that does a tray-load at a  
time.

But for prototyping and small-to-moderate production runs, given the  
choice between a JTAG dongle and a Data I/O that occupies a whole  
table, we'd rather have the table space.

-a


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