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SiriusHardware · 6th May 2021, 5:13 pm

I have an ICE Tech Micromaster 1000E which has the EPROM emulation facility (The 'E' denoting that it has that feature, the plain '1000' does not) but it is not standalone like the S3 or S4 - like most programmers from its period it uses a DOS program running on a PC as the 'dashboard'.

What we have to realise about programmers like the Softy 1 / Softy 2 is that they needed to be self contained because almost nobody at that time had a computer, or if they did it would be something like an MK14 or if you were well off, a NASCOM. For most users, the programmer itself had to provide the user interface as well as the programming hardware.

6th May 2021, 5:13 pm	#43
SiriusHardware Dekatron Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, UK. Posts: 11,586	Re: Early EPROM programmer. I have an ICE Tech Micromaster 1000E which has the EPROM emulation facility (The 'E' denoting that it has that feature, the plain '1000' does not) but it is not standalone like the S3 or S4 - like most programmers from its period it uses a DOS program running on a PC as the 'dashboard'. What we have to realise about programmers like the Softy 1 / Softy 2 is that they needed to be self contained because almost nobody at that time had a computer, or if they did it would be something like an MK14 or if you were well off, a NASCOM. For most users, the programmer itself had to provide the user interface as well as the programming hardware.