A little off-topic, but relevant to the forum:

It seems that the key to getting quality in certain developing nations is to be a big enough company (like Apple which was mentioned above) to have your own people over there watching over things. (That's not to say that all big companies are as careful as Apple seems to be though.) The two tiny companies I've been with for the last 26 years have kept trying making things over there (in developing countries in the Orient, but not China) and it's a continual headache. On the last effort, they assembled 100 SMT boards to the wrong (outdated) parts list, and of course we couldn't get them and even find out until we had paid for them. Other times, we have complained about a problem, asked them to please use this other part, they send us a sample, we say, "Perfect! Now give us a thousand just like that!" and the next batch comes and it has the old problematic part again, and their excuse is, "We had 5,000 of the old one we had to use up first." And if they run out of something (because they used it on another customer's product without our permission) and it's easier to substitute than to try to find the same part again, they'll do it, not recognizing the importance the exact part had in the application.

We tried getting SMT assembly here in the States, and the set-up costs were astronomical-- prohibitive. There is an assembly house 30 miles from me that apparently has decided they'll have to be much more reasonable to survive in the current economy and they charge, if I remember correctly, $3 per part number for the setup and a few cents per part after that for assembly. I expect that making the solderpaste mask would have to be extra. I haven't been the one to check around, but it sounds very reasonable. If I set up a business [Edit, Feb 2012: I now have-- see link at bottom] to make and sell things like my 4Mx8 SRAM module [Edit: data sheet now available here and get enough orders to go to automated assembly, that's where I would go at this point.

http://WilsonMinesCo.com/

You're right: it shouldn't be an issue. Yet products manufactured in China continue to lead the pack when it comes to inferiority.


See Garth's above remarks in that regard.


Ed's apparent problem is he feels one should never say anything negative. Case in point in case, here's the text of his latest PM to me:


Ed, the trouble with being politically correct is, more often than not, you are not correct. The unvarnished truth is often painful to face, and unlike you and perhaps a few others, I really don't care if the unvarnished truth hurts some feelings. To quote another forum member:


Yes, there are highly competent Chinese people (one of whom is married to my sister) and, yes, there are some Chinese manufacturers who produce a high quality product. However, output from China has a much higher failure/reject rate than from most other countries that have a manufacturing-based economy. Why shouldn't that be pointed out? It is a consistent problem and needs to be highlighted until it is satisfactorily rectified. If someone in China doesn't like the fact that some rude and crude Yankee exclaimed that the emperor is wearing no clothes, too bad! The Japanese didn't have a problem facing criticism back in the 1960s when "Made in Japan" was synonymous with junk. Instead, they fixed the problem and, today, Japanese products (especially Toyotas) are held in high esteem.


With a comment like that you'd fit right in with some of the political types here in the USA. Any time someone criticizes a public official who is also a minority for substandard performance accusations of racism are hurled. My remarks about the quality of Chinese goods have nothing to do with race (Chinese, by the way, is not a race—the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Laotians, etc., are all of the same race) and everything to do with poor quality. I don't know for a fact that this stuff is actually produced by Chinese people. However, if the package says "Made in China" then it's a Chinese product.

Incidentally, I spent some time looking through my old posts and couldn't find anything sexist. When it comes to taking people to task, I'm an equal opportunity sort of bloke. And I can take it as well as I can dish it out.


Where possible, I make a recommendation of something with which I have had personal experience.


Please don't confuse "preferable" with "mandatory."

Ed, you are not in charge of this forum and your opinions are just that: opinions. They carry exactly as much weight as any other opinion. Perhaps if you'd be less inclined to castigate those who say things with which you disagree (or misinterpret), someone like Samuel Falvo (kc5tja) would still be here.

BDD, and indeed everyone, my concern is with this forum being a welcoming and helpful place.

Unhelpful and hostile posts, posts with insulting phrasing, don't help. It's my belief that we don't have anyone here who sets out to be destructive or exclusive - but they may be destructive or exclusive by accident. They may not appreciate that the way they express their experiences comes across in a bad way.

In my view, a good post is
- helpful and welcoming to a newcomer
- encouraging and constructive rather than discouraging or dismissive
- mindful that people have different amounts of resources, whether money or equipment
- mindful that people have different levels of expertise and experience
- respectful of different backgrounds or nationalities, and aware of the possibility of English being a second or third language
- careful to restate a question or problem unambiguously, or to restate seeking clarification, rather than presuming a position and arguing

A good post will also be on-topic to 6502.org, to the sub-forum and to the conversation as it stands, to the extent that is consistent with an interesting conversation.

A good post will avoid hot-button topics such as politics and religion.

Specific to BDD's present concerns, if I find a post offensive, I may bring it to the attention of a moderator or I may PM the poster. As any of us may. Similarly, we might choose to respond publicly. Normally I wouldn't do that, because it's less discreet and because it disrupts the thread.

Cheers
Ed

How did racism creep into this thread.. Commenting on products people of a given country produce has nothing to do with racism.. I has to do with the anger we feel when we find out the money we spent was wasted.. And on on top of that the wasted time trying to make the things work.. Or the collateral damage that occurs, Like in this case, Memory or MCU chips getting smoked..

The fact is that the majority of the items coming from China are trash, Its a fact.. Note the key word is Majority meaning (In excess of 50%) not ALL.. The designation Trash may be applied for any of the reasons stated below..

They have yet to discover the meaning of Customer support, Quality control and and the usefulness of criticism and product feedback.. And the number one rule when selling a product in the USA hire a American to write the User Manual with a trouble shooting guide that says more than check the power plug... They will eventually learn these truths as the Japanese did..

I bought a $500 400amp dc motor controller from china.. The manual says pin XXX is for the Current Meter and can source 40ma but the amp-meter is 400amp scale and is the 75mv verity but they list it as 200ma which clearly cannot be driven with 40 ma.. I emailed them and pointed out the errors in the manual.. Return email says "IT WORK" ,, 2 years now and the manual has not been corrected..

I will keep Updating as I figure ways to overcome some of the TOP20xx shortcomings.. And the TOP3xxx is to newest version and in the $160 to $200 bracket hopefully they fixed allot of the shortcomings of the prior models, But its probably to early in production to get useful feedback on them..
Also Note the TOP853"s are being dumped on EBay because software development for them has ended as of 4/2011...

What I am trying here is to find products or ways to make these economical products work for those of us in Hobby mode without allot of cash to waste,, And which Products give a good bang for the buck with the least amount of headachs..

OK on to another programmer

The (True USB Willem universal programmer GQ-X4 or X3)... Does Anyone have any experience with these programmers from MCUmall.. Seems they were designed in Canada but manufactured in China.. I see a new version of the operating software was just released,, And upon reading the manual I found it well written but not updated for the latest software release,, The question is do they live up the the advertising hype.. Prices range approximately from $64 to $88 for the X3, It has 32 pin ZIF and a header socket for additional address lines or on board MCU programming, And comes in PCB board format.. The X4 sells for $89 to $119 and has a 40 pin ZIF and uses a dip header to do on board MCU programming and comes in a case.. Pricing variations are depending on how many plug in chip adapters you get with it.. They claim most of the adapters for the old parallel port version work with it.. Both can be powered from the USB port or a Wall Wart, And claim a 200ma power draw..

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When falling from a high place, You might as well try to fly

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

The "Universal device programmer" is, these days, as JTAG adaptor. You can pickup numerous FT?232 based USB dongles these days which can give you bitrates between ~12Mbit/s (older chips) to (I think) 100Mbit/s (newer ones). The FT2232 ones will probably also incorporate a (good!) USB to serial converter. FT4232 ones are just showing off - those things are capable of 4 outputs, up to two of which may be SPI/JTAG.

An FT?232 device can program most ARM MCUs with the OpenOCD software. FPGAs and CPLDs can be programmed by having your FPGA software (ISE, Quartus, etc) output an (X)SVF file, which is basically a list of JTAG commands to send to the device being programmed.

It should (in theory) also be pretty easy to use an FT?232 device as a USB->SPI adaptor (e.g. with the right software as an SPI EEPROM burner). I'm not sure of the capabilities of the bitbang mode, but theoretically it should also be able to use it to do I2C.

I have no idea for parallel EEPROMs. My experience does not lie with them (and often when you need to program an EEPROM, you load an EEPROM programming program onto the device's MCU)


The only thing to watch out for with JTAG is the fact that there are about 20 different "standard" pin headers. Which "standard" you use will probably be decided by (A) what kind of device you're developing (e.g. theres an ARM defacto standard, an AVR defacto standard...) and (B) what your programmer have!

FTDI seem to have noticed the JTAG dongle use of their product. They have a premade dongle which goes to individual .1" pins; you can also download a JTAG appnote on their website

Thanks
That's good to know.. I have the Sparkfun FT232 USB to Serial breakout board that has all pins available.. And 2 other FT232's I got from china with rs485 drivers chips on-board that I bought to communicate with the large IBM florescent cash register displays, But other signals are brought out to a SIP header..
You can change the TTL output between True and Inverted in driver software with a configuration app they have available,, But I just stick a hex inverter on board,, Gives better driving current,, And additional protection for the FT232 chip.. Being I continually plug them into different proto-boards..

I have a 4th that has the FT232 and a Picaxe 20X2 built like a Basic Stamp and programmable in basic,, It runs at 60mhz and is 3.3 & 5 volt capable.. You could program it to do most anything,, Especially by adding 8 and 16bit I2C bus extenders.. You could create a sudo parallel address & data buss... But the key to programming parallel devices is having a library of the timing and voltage configuration options.. You could probably program it to do a few specific devices but making it universal would be a major challenge.. I will have to look into the JTAG options for them though..

I just took a quick glance at their website and the FT232H and the FT2232D both list JTAG options and probably a few other versions.. But it would be best to avoid bit banging.. Need to do a little investigating to find out which chips support the various interfaces Nativity..

On the FT232 the BL has the least functions,, The RL has more functions and supports programmable signal inversion,, And the H is the latest and greatest,, But harder to find on breakout boards.. The FT2232 is a Swiss army knife on a chip.. And I found some FT2232 breakout board in the $27 range

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When falling from a high place, You might as well try to fly

Just curious, but why did you put the I/O on page 2?

The only reason I ask is that I usually put it between RAM and ROM with a little space between RAM and I/O.

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Bill

When using standard 74 series logic, it makes sense to put I/O in between RAm and ROM as it takes less gates that way.

With programmable logic, there are plenty of gates so I took a look at the memory map.

Page 0 - special purpose - zero-page
Page 1 - special purpose - Stack
Page FF - Special purpose - reset/nmi/irq vectors

So, in order to keep as much continous memory, using page 2 or Page FE made the most sense.

With I/O at page 2, I can have Page 3 to page FE be all RAM, or split between RAM/ROM with no gaps.

It would be just as easy to place I/O at any page you desire, as the GAL can support it without a hardware change.

Hope that helps!

Daryl

It does, thanks Daryl.

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Bill

Had a TOP, was able to return it since it didn't work worth a darn. Did pick up a Wilhelm, it was ok, the software was fairly screwball, though.

was able to get a needham one going under XP so that is my main axe. Love that one sincerely....

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"My biggest dream in life? Building black plywood Habitrails"

To answer Garth's question...

I have both a Sivava PCB45 (~$40, made in Thailand) and a Genius 540 (~50, made in China).

The Sivava unit is well a made Willem type unit and uses a genuine 3M zif socket. I have had this since the PCB45 was the latest version and it has worked well. It can be powered off USB or a wall-wart. Drawbacks (for me) are: It uses the parallel port for communications, you need to set jumpers depending on device, it has poor GAL support. I could also never get it to program a PIC 16F877A. Not that it couldn't, but I never got it to work, there just seemed to be something I missed in teh dip switch/software configuration. It uses mostly 4000 series and 14000 series chips. There is one chip that has the information scratched off it. I suspect that it is, ironically, a GAL.

The Genius is less well made, but not too bad. This has a knock-off of 3M zif socket. Its the right size and shape of a standard 232-6182 and even says 3M on it, but the plastic is shiny and slightly malformed. If it is indeed a 3M, I'm sad. I have had this for a few months and it has never had a problem. It uses a 8051 and an Altera MAX3032 as well as some 4000 series logic and ULN2003 drivers as well as many, many SMD transistors. The data lines of the USB go directly into the 8051, so no standard USB here. In use it is much quicker than the Sivava and much easier to use.

Off the 2, the software for the Willem programmers is a bit better, but both function well.

In case it makes a difference, I run both of them from Windows XP, as I do all my development tools. It is just easier that way.

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Bill

FYI

Mouser has LAT 22V10's for sale. These should work with the inexpensive programmers some of us have. I ordered a few and will test one when they arrive.

Daryl

Has anyone tried using an input to the GAL from a VIA port as a ROM/RAM switch similar to what the 6510 did with it's on chip I/O port that it used for manipulating the processors address space?

Steve