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Best purchase I've made in years

D

dhoelzer

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Joined
Oct 20, 2012
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523
Location
New York
As I complete another system here I'm forced to reflect on the single most useful thing that I've purchased in recent years.

It's not the 104 channel logic probe. It's cool, but it's rarely needed (thought it was quite handy for figuring out a weird signaling problem on a Iic)

It's not the Oscilloscope (though it's super handy in many situations)

It's the $120 GQ-4X Univeral Programmer that I bought two or three years ago with all of the adapters. As I complete the upgrade to the V7 ROMs for an A2091 I'm thinking back on just how often I get this thing out to check ROMs, recreate ROMs, update ROMs... That (plus a stock of 2732s, 2764s, 27128s and 27256s) has served me so incredibly well!
 
I picked up the same programmer earlier this year and have really been enjoying it. I've also got more projects on the way where I need to program chips. It's my first programmer and I'm so glad I went with the GQ-4X. :)

Heather
 
I've pulled mine out a handful of times. I didn't pick up the adapters, as I figured on the "purchase when needed" option rather than the "have handy for when needed" mentality... but I've not needed any adapters yet! I'm able to program Amiga Kickstart roms, NES roms for personal-use repro carts, and various roms used for my old PCs... color me happy!
 
That's interesting... Amiga Kickstart ROMs are what actually got me to buy the adapter... For the 500/2000, the chips (I forget the number offhand) supposedly requires the adapter.

Maverick1978 said:
I've pulled mine out a handful of times. I didn't pick up the adapters, as I figured on the "purchase when needed" option rather than the "have handy for when needed" mentality... but I've not needed any adapters yet! I'm able to program Amiga Kickstart roms, NES roms for personal-use repro carts, and various roms used for my old PCs... color me happy!
Click to expand...
 
I bought my GQ4 back in 2010, I've generally been happy with it, I's small lightweight and easy to use, I've found on mine it is hit and miss when burning smaller eprom chips < 27128 and they don''t support Pal's or Gal's, If i were looking for another programmer i'd probably be looking at the cheaper chinese models, From what i've read some of them support pal's / gal's and can test 74 series chips which the GQ4 can't. All of them have their pro's and con's.
 
i'm so jealous. I bought mine when the model being offered is the GQ2x. Now, this unit of mine is considered legacy..it has been only 2-3 years ago. However, I think I got most of my money out of it. I have been using it for my C64 projects (kernals, cartridge eproms, etc.). The good thing about it is that it still good for most of the 27xxx eproms that I have and also some PIC devices.

I must mention that a good program to complement this a WinHEX to look at the bin /hex files (sometimes) needed in Eprom programming. Also, a good 5v wall adapter to give the programmer a stable power (some laptops don't have much power from the USB output).

RizThomas
 
dhoelzer said:
That's interesting... Amiga Kickstart ROMs are what actually got me to buy the adapter... For the 500/2000, the chips (I forget the number offhand) supposedly requires the adapter.
Click to expand...
Hmm... after checking the data sheets, it appears that my memory is fuzzy :confused:

I needed the adapter to program the Kickstart roms, but found some 3.1's in a stack of old chips I bought over 10 years ago off of ebay which suited my purpose. Thanks for pointing this out - I wasn't trying to mislead anyone!
 
Yep, you definitely need the Adapter for Amiga ROMs. I didn't realize this when I bought mine. Even if you need to buy adapters, it's very versatile. :)

Heather
 
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