When a fellow looks at his "junk drawer" and finds a few parts, wondering, perhaps, "Do you suppose these can be made to work?" when he sees an old MCU or two, it's mostly a mental masturbation exercise, but, would you deprive him of that? He'd need an oscillator in either case, and a '373/573 isn't hard to find, probably also in his parts inventory. I've never simply thrown out those old EPROMs that I've had lying about since the '70's ... and if someone asked me for one or two, I'd readily give 'em some. Parallel-port-based programmers aren't hard to build, nor are they hard to get working.

Erasing 'em, ... well, A UV lamp is not available at the corner convenience store, but they are still for sale down at Home Depot or even at Walgreen's, though they're not cheap. One fellow I know used to get his barber to erase his EPROMs when his eraser went south.

I think a guy who really wants to use an old Intel P805x is a glutton for punishment, given that he can get a serially programmable FLASH-based part for what the gas to the hardware store costs, but why not help him do what he wants rather than telling him that he's wrong to pursue it? There's no question that it's easier to do as you suggest, but if that's not what he wants to do, why be like the boy-scout who helped the elderly lady across the street when she really didn't want to go?

RE