(replying to several comments at once)


First, I am interested in SILabs, since they're kind of a hometown favorite here in Austin. Having said that... It's just a hobby for me. I'm going to fiddle around with what I have and learn the core technology at my own pace. I have a pretty good day job coding Perl, and college is 15 years behind me. I have a couple projects in mind, one involving a seismograph (my degree is in Geology, not CS or EE), and another a 3 phase variable speed inverter suitable for an electric car or garden railway. All pie in the sky stuff!


The board programs 89S52/53, 89S8252/8253, C2051/4051, and some of the newer 14 & 16 pin Atmels. (Note: I'm going out of my way here to not mention the boardmaker, as a courtesy to Craig & VIS.) It doesn't use FLIP, it comes with it's own app. I don't think it can program my AT89C51ED2 even with FLIP on the serial port because the PSEN pin is tied off, though I can probably work around that. It's not really a problem because I can just program it on a perfboard via the serial port. But it's a $10 chip with 64k of control store. There's value in learning on something cheaper, that will force me to code effeciently.


The bit about removing the 89S8253 and programming a 89S52. I was having a "OK so does it work? Let's try something..." moment. I decided to either download PaulMon, or replace an antique original power sucking 8052AH-BASIC chip in my old Circuit Cellar EPROM programmer. I found the hex file for the latter first, so I decided to switch chips first, which brought me to the ZIF question.


It all made perfect sense this morning while I was drinking my coffee. Honest! :-)