Matt, If it’s rs-232 serial, likely you don’t need anything but a term program. Try 9600bps, 8 data bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit, to start with. 38,400bps is also common. A large number of programmers from that era are self-contained; since rs-232 isn’t a real-time-suitable protocol (like usb!), images were generally uploaded to the unit’s internal memory, before programming a device. Similarly, devices could be read to memory, and then downloaded. - Alex On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 16:27 Matt Reynolds via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Herb,
It's vintage, which is why I thought I'd take a stab at asking you folks. The motherboard says it was made in 1989.
1. It is screen printed in the name on the device that it is rs-232.
2. I can try and use PuTTY and see if that works but I'm sure it needs more than that.
3. I'm trying to set this device up so i can read\burn EEPROMS, so I'd have to buy\use something else to read the one inside of it.. There is an 8085 processor in it. There is also an 8155 and 8251.
4. This may have been common in the past, but I'm only four years older than the device itself. I've never had to do it, I'm trying to learn about it, which is why I bought it in the first place :)
I am not giving up hope that the software is out there somewhere. The software for it's more expensive relative is on bitsavers, I will probably try and install it and see what it does regardless. Maybe I'll get lucky and it will work. I'll also try the straight up serial connection and see what happens.
Thanks,
Matt
On Mon, May 27, 2019, 3:34 PM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
software that goes with a B&C Microsystems Inc. UP100 Universal RS232 E(E)PROM/Micro Programmer.
If this is some modern unit with a single-chip microcontroller, you are probably out of luck. If not, if it's vintage enough to have a microprocessor and some ROM and some RAM:
1) confirm the unit is "RS-232" or serial. Many of them used a PC parallel port. YOu'll have to reverse engineer the circuits at the DB25 (or DB9) connector.
2) If it's really serial, chances are it can be operated with a serial terminal (or PC running a comm program). You may have to guess at the baud rates, it may be autobaud, using the first character received to determine a baud rate. "Hit return a lot.".
If it's PC parallel, you are mostly out of luck. But there's still:
3) if all that fails, Pull the PROM out of the unit - chances are it has one - and dump it. Of course you'll need an EPROM reader, once, to do this. Also note the processor in the unit. You may need to disassemble the code, at least a little. But it may be informative even as an ASCII dump.
- Um, this is the kind of thing done, lots of time in the past, to make sense of some unknown microcomputer. Is this "lost art" now?
Puzzled, Herb Johnson
-- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net