Well it arrived, and it is more than I expected. Much more.
It can program pretty much any prom chip (91 in all). It is palm sized and uses a built-in zif socket. The 10V power requirement isn't a problem, game consoles use a 10v power supply that will be more than enough power for it.
It includes windows and DOS based software and a 4 foot parallel cable. Will be burning proms soon, I hope.

 

Sweet. What was the price again? Have any software screenshots?

Better yet, wanna break that case open and show us a pic of the guts?

 

Price was $79. I haven't hooked it up to my computer yet, I am trying to get an answer from them as to the polarity of the power connector. Can't open it up, it has a tamper seal on it that voids the warranty.
Just got my answer; 10-12 volts 850+mA center negative. I'll be up and running it shortly!

 

What's with the windows software? Looks like it's for the pocket programmer, not what you've got, or do they have the same exact guts, different shell?

 

No doubt. Exactly the same. Wonder if it's a clone. Maybe the Pocket Programmer is a clone of this? Anyways, there might be issue with that.

Nice to see a programmer for a reasonable price.

 

He did say that it had a $15 license for the software so maybe that explains it. They're paying Intronix for its software?

 

Yes it is by Xtronics, but its an OLD version. That version is only 1.08W from March 2001. If it is an earlier version, then there were a lot of bugs with it. I couldn't get Xtronics software to work properly on my computers until around the V 1.20 (Summer of 2001).

Also, does it allow you to get the "upgrades" from Xtronics?

 

Well I was able to find a little info from the net on the company that makes this programmer. They started in Kansas it seems and when there they built the "origional" Pocket programmer, and from the pictures it looks quite old. They have since moved the mfg to Bangkok Thailand and very little information was found on this new programmer, sometimes they call it the Pocket Programmer 2 and sometimes they call it the SPEP plus..who knows who copied who, if anyone.

 

Will it program EEPROMs and FLASH memory? I saw that one too and was about ready to jump on it, but all I read was EPROM chips and nothing regarding EEPROM and FLASH. At Futurlec or something like that.

 

Yes, it will program the 29 series flash chips.

 

Then that's a pretty sweet deal! I think I tried ordering that a while ago and the place took FOREVER to send it. After about 10 e-mails I gave up ... they didn't charge the card so that was good. Don't know what was the deal there.

Good luck man!

 

Took 2 weeks for mine to arrive. They ship from
Bangkok, Thailand, air mail. But they always answered my E mails very promptly, usually within 2 hours.

 

Bangkok? I should have my mother-in-law cuss them out in Thai! lol! bastards ... oh well, got a good one coming anyway . ...

 

Where did you get it??

 

If I'm not mistaken, the one I saw that looks pretty much like Moley's is http://www.futurlec.com ...

 

Same one, same company.

 

79 bucks, that cool. How much would it cost to have a shop make a custom chip. I just want to compare this price to the equitment.

 

I finally got the programmer to burn a chip <YEAH!>. The compiler software that Craig sent me (I believe someone here is writing it) had a bug in it where it wanted the 165 .bin files to be 32k in size instead of 16k. A little minor surgery and it compiled 32 165 bins just fine.
Next, the programmer software semed unable to program the chip with anything other than ff's. I tried everything to get it to work (it only does flash chips with the windows software) but it refused to program in win 95, gave up and wrote to the place where I bought it, they were/are clueless as to why it wouldn't work. Got some sleep. Woke up and tried to hook it all up to my main computer running win xp (heheheheh yeah right) XP refused to let the program to run. <lets hear it for mickeysoft>.
Last chance....fired up the win 98 machine, hooked programmer up and installed chip, loaded the 512k bin to buffer and hit program. I watched as it programed address by address, waiting for the "failed to program" message and was amazed when it ended programming at address 7FFFF, the end of the chip. Verivied program to buffer...all good.
Now to install the chip adaptor in my ECM and see what happens.

All in all I am happy with the programmer, the people at Futurlec are looking into why it had so much trouble with win 95. They have always been very prompt and helpful when I have contacted them.

 

I would bet they start at $300 and go up rapidly, the cheaper the chip the worse the programming job.

$80 for the programmer, $15 for the power supply, 9-12 volt DC (I had one laying around) and $75 for Craig's adaptor setup with chip.
So, $155-$170 and a bunch of your own time invested for a chip that will be RIGHT for your particular engine setup.
And by the time you are done you'll know everything you need to(well almost) about tuning your car.

 

I just got my SPEP PLUS. Damn, center negative huh? All the wall warts I've got laying around here are center positive! I suppose a trip to Wal*Mart is in order... Did you ever figure out why it wouldn't work with Win95? Did you ever get it to work with XP? If neither works then I guess my laptop will be going back to Win98, that'll probably solve my WinALDL woes too though come to think of it.

Later,
Harry

 

I have it working with win 95 & 98 (haven't tried XP) by using the software for the Pocket Programmer II. Surprise..they are the same programmer except one is center pos the other neg.

 

The PP1 is center neg. and the PP2 is center pos.

Jerry

 

Well, I can't get it to work with XP on my desktop. Every time I load the program I get a "Priveleged Instruction" error... whatever that is. So I guess it's back to Win98 for my laptop. Now I've just gotta take the thing apart to find the PWD jumper. It was surplus from a local company and somebody put an admin password on the BIOS settings and I can't figure it out! Grrrrrr.

 

i hate it when they password protect the bios. can't have any fun that way.

 

Cant ya just take out the CMOS battery for a minute or two and re-boot? Sure, your BIOS might have to be reconfigured, but it should be able to do that automagically with no problems.

Scott

 

Bill Gates is one of the few among us who is truly Evil in a bad way...

 

Just got my SPEP Plus today. It arrived in about 9 days from Thailand. Haven't fired it up yet, must find a PS first.
Ben.

 

What brand of laptop?

 

I just got a PS for my SPEP programmer and fired it up.
First I tried the windows version of the software on my P100 Win95 laptop. It appeared to work ok, but produced errors when verified... So I tried the dos version on the same laptop and it failed to find the programmer... Tried it on my XP desktop, no go...
Finally tried the dos version on an old '486 laptop i have and it worked!! Yet to try the eprom in the car, but it verified ok a number of times.. I would like to try the PPII windows software with this SPEP, it sounds like some others have had success with it.
Ben.

 

It's an older Dell Latitude CP. Pentium 233, 80M ram, 40Gig HD... I tore the thing apart looking for the PWD jumper and could never find one. Flashed the BIOS, that didn't do it. I finally gave up and handed the thing to my brother to fix (he's an IT assistant at a local Northrup Grumman plant and does this sort of thing all day long). He finally got 2000Pro off of it and installed Win98.

Problem now is I STILL can't get WinALDL to work! So far I've been trying to on and off for about 6 months, built 3 different cables (one using the DTR pin for 12 volts and two using a hot wire from the car), tried 2 different laptops, 3 different OSs, 2 different cars, and all to no avail. The only thing I can figure is that either I'm missing something simple in setting up the serial port for it, I'm doing something in the wrong order (is there a correct order?), or ALL of my cables were fudged up in some way. I did not use a heat sink between the resistors or transistors and the soldering tip when I made the cables and that is about the only thing I can think of that would fudge it up. I dunno, if any of you have any ideas let me know.

Later,
Harry

 

Larry,
What type of transistors did you use, and did you correctly identify it's legs?
Ben.

 

For the first 2 cables I built I used 2N2222s. The last one I built I just bought a pack of 15 Radio Shack generic NPN-Type switching transistors p/n 276-1617. They are rated the same as the 2N2222s I believe, so I didn't think I'd have any problems there considering Jonas says that just about any NPN-Type switching transistors will work. Yes, I correctly identified the legs. Does it matter what wattage the resistors are rated at? I just bought some .25 watt 10K resistors, all the ones I've previously used were .50 watt. I'm going to make ANOTHER cable tonight. I bought a solder heat sink today because I'm afraid I might be frying the parts when I solder them. Anyone else using the pins labled "batt" on the fuse block for their 12 volts or see anything wrong with this? It tested out fine on my voltmeter. I feel like such a newbie when I come in this board

Later,
Harry

Maybe I should start a new thread? I don't want to hijack the SPEP thread completely.

 

Are you using pin A for the ground on the cable? You have to use pin A, no other ground seems to work.

 

Yup. It's got me stumped. Like I said, I'm gonna try making one more cable tonight. If this doesn't work I might just break down and buy one.

 

I may have answered my own question here. I went to Jonas' site this morning and looked a little more carefully at the pics of his cable. It appears as if he used .25 watt resistors in his cable. I didn't get around to building the new cable last night (had a few too many beers ), but I'm stoked about trying this again now. I hope it is just that I was using the wrong wattage resistors before.

Later,
Harry

 

I hate to say it but, the wattage of the resistor shouldn't be a factor so long as you don't exceed the wattage rating. Thats just the maximum power the resistor can handle going through it before it burns out.

You may have been on the right track with the heatsink for the components. What wattage of solidering iron were you using? A 15 watt is about the largest you want to use on small electronic components, and let it heat up completely before trying to solider with it and only keep it on the component long enough to melt the solider.

 

Did he say how he did that?.
I have a Dell that was a lease laptop, and there is some hidden password that won't allow dumping the OS.

 

I knew someone would say that. I built the new cable making sure to use the heat sink pliers between the transistor, resistors, and where I was soldering. You know what I've got to show for it? Nothing. I've done everything right as far as the cable is concerned so it MUST be something else now. My thinking is that my com port must be set up wrong. Can anyone tell me what their settings are for the following?

-Bits per second:
-Data bits:
-Parity:
-Stop bits:
-Flow control:

And under "Advanced Port Settings" are you using FIFO buffers and if so what settings? What driver file version are you using.

I WILL GET WINALDL TO WORK!!!

Grumpy, I'll ask my brother about it tomorrow when I see him. I'm not exactly sure what he did.

 

I just used the default settings that windows sets when you install it and it worked fine.

Check for continuity from pin E (serial data) to the ECM, you may have a broken wire there.

 

He cheated, basically. After unhooking the CMOS battery for an hour it didn't remove the password on bios (wierd huh) and, as mentioned before, neither flashing the bios worked nor was there a PWD jumper to pull. So instead he took out the HD, stuck it in another computer, and formatted/installed Win98 before returning it to my laptop.
I don't believe that this could be it because it doesn't work with my youngest brother's firebird either. I will test it though. I've decided to test the serial port on my laptop as well. Could be that something is FUBARed there.

I noticed that in Jonas' screen shots there is a number displayed in the white box to the left of the configuration button. What is that all about? I'm gonna test all this tonight in hopes that I can start burning PROMs with my SPEP ASAP (at which point I'll probably run into more problems) Thanks for all your help so far guys, I'll have this thing beat soon.

Later,
Harry