When I bought my BP programmer, they couldn't program any more than half the chips I wanted to program, I ended up sending the thing back because then they didn't handle 'em as well or as promptly as today. That's why I use the UniSite from Data I/O. That's always, until a more fancy model from Data I/O became available, been the benchmark. Before the UniSite, it was the old '2900. You saw them everywhere. A second-hand UniSite will program almost anything, and, if it doesn't, which wouldn't surprise me with the ATMEL chips' requirement for a dedicated programmer for every revision, costs considerably less with all the "bells and whistles" (for various packages) than a BP. Almost everything I use or even encounter is serially programmable these days. The discussions here have shown that, too.

I have, however, concluded that it's best to have a programmer designed specifically to handle those newer Atmel or Philips parts. I don't know about others. I've found the simple, 3-IC serial programmer that handles the Maxim/Dallas parts is pretty effective.

The UniSite, though it once was intended to do just that, never did handle every possible package. After a while, one had more hardware, and more cash invested in it in the form of adapters, than in the UniSite, which was a BIG investment when it was current.

RE