Much to my wife's chagrin, I just found a new toy...
I'd posted to a couple newsgroups & another email list on my continuing
search for a decent *affordable* PAL/GAL/EPROM/Flash programmer, and
someone suggested I check online vendors for refurbed "obsolete" items. I'd
done that before with no luck, but that renewed my interest of looking
around, so I googled a little more, and stumbled across a homebrew
electronics FAQ:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/homebuilt-comp-FAQ/
which had a nice long list of hardware vendors who sell just these kinds of
things, at *way* too much money. But, I persevered, and when I got to the
*last* web address on the list, low & behold... Paydirt!
http://www.xeltek.com/
They sell their refurbed programmers at muchly reduced prices, and had a
decent stock of them, to boot! I needed one that was parallel port capable,
as my main PeeCee & my laptop at work use expansion slots that aren't ISA.
I got their Superpro L, 40-pin programmer & 74xx series logic tester for
$185, plus SH&I rounded it to $200 and a few pennies...
I couldn't resist clicking on "add to cart" and "checkout" - they take
PayPal for payment as well as Credit Cards -- around 1400 hrs EST. I got a
receipt email about 20 seconds later... and 3 hours later, another email
that it's already been shipped, with a tracking number! :-)
Yiippee!!!
So, to make sure this stays on-topic (as 90+% of what I'm using this for is
programming stuff for classic computers) if anyone has (or knows where to
find) the datafile to program a fresh GAL to fix a gray Tandy Multi-Pak
adapter (26-3024, IIRC) for CoCo3 usage, I'd be happy to burn new GALs for
anyone needing them for cost of GAL & shipping. I have a Multi-Pak that
needs updating, and I dunno if anyone else has this ability (or cares)
anymore...
Just one thing left to find... an SMD rework station for around the same
($200) mark... (again, so I can make boards for my CoCos...)
(The same site has a sale on their SMDeasy station - $349, but that's still
a wee bit out of my price range... time to save my pennies...)
Well, just had to share my good fortune with y'all...
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.
If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
Received on Tue Feb 12 2002 - 20:18:09 GMT