After discovering that my 8175 programmer won't do what I thought, I've educated myself a little bit more on the subject. Although the 904 would do what I want in this project, if I understand correctly, I would need to keep a computer without VGA running at 8Mhz or less ready and waiting to operate it in the future. I'm leaning away from that at this point.
The 5160 and 5170 I have were acquired to teach my 5 yr old about where computers came from, and give him a some of the same computer education I got from my father when I was a kid. Once he learns to respect the command line, BASIC, and gets some hardware experience we are going to skip a generation and build a 486DX together. As much I'd love to have a room filled with vintage systems all running happily I only have space for one or two full size systems at a time. So, I'm currently looking at modern eprom programmers with the capability to program the BIOS roms in anything from an IBM AT to current hardware, as well as chips for other projects we may undertake.
The programmer currently on my screen is one from GQ electronics, the True USB Willem GQ-4X. It seems to have the capability I need, but I wonder how it could cost so much less than other programmers?
I appreciate your assistance.