Emil's Projects & Reviews

I own a Galep4 programmer and I wanted to read out the content of an Intel 28F640B3 NOR memory. Unfortunately this programmer only has a 40 pin DIL socket any my part was a TSOP48. Conitec (maker of Galep programmers) provides such an adapter for an extortion price of 300 Euros. For this price you can get the Xeltek 610P (which is in the same category as the Galep5 with 48 universal pins and very well supported) and a TSOP48 to DIL48 adapter . In fact I've just ordered these two for my future needs but to get the memory content out I've quickly bread-boarded an equivalent adapter.

Memory Read Cycle	Schematics of the Galep 210855 adapter

I've used a logic analyser to figure out the adapter connectivity and for this particular NOR memory it worked well. The full VCD capture can be downloaded here.

The trick to get more address lines than available socket pins is to either latch the addresses into a register or to serially shift them in a register. Conitec uses a 14-bit serial register to store addresses A16-A10,A6-A0 in these 14 bits. They've left A9-A7 out because some chips need higher voltages on these pins to read electronic signatures and other configuration data. The choice of putting the lower addresses in the shift register is not the best because you'll have to shift a new address for every read word but I presume they wanted the flexibility for other pins. The serial clock is at 1MHz so two 74HC595 work perfectly but one read cycle lasts 290us and this makes the programmer very slow. It is much better to get another programmer with a 48 pin socket. The VS4800 programmer has only partial universal pins, costs only 65$ and still supports all the main stream memory chips.

I've also designed 2 PCBs if anyone wants to build his own cheap adapter:

TSOP48 to DIL48 (Gerber)	DIL48 to DIL40 Galep (Gerber)

I have a couple of boards left so if you want one drop me a message. I will send you what's in the picture bellow (all except the TSOP48 ZIF socket) for 5 Euros + shipment to your country.

Update

I've received the new Xeltek 610P programmer and it was a little disappointing. I've quickly tried to program 4 chips that I had laying around: SST28F080, ATMega32L, ATMega324A and AT90S8515. Two out of four failed to program with the latest version of Xeltek software. These means their software is not quite there yet. All the chips programed fine in my Galep4 so I should still keep my old programmer for a while.

SuperPro 610P with AT90S8515 inserted	Xeltek software version (last at the time of writing)
ID error and failed verification for ATMega324A	Failed detection for AT90S8515

I've reported the bug to Xeltek, let's see how long it takes until they correct it. P.S. After six months the bugs are still not corrected and Xeltek does not reply to emails. One of the problems I've reported involves just the replacement of the chip ID. Based on this support problem alone you'd better look elsewhere for your next programmer.