Great tool for SW development and debugging!
For EPROM-EMULATOR-DIY-ARDUINO
Since more than 3 years, I am very much engaged in building and developing computers which were popular in the 80s. Most of all, I started the new production of PCBs for the "NDR Klein Computer", which was popular in West-Germany and even introduced in a educational TV series. This is somehow similar to the "modern" RC2014 and supported CPUs from Z80 over 68008 and i8088 up to 68000 and 68020. When I developed a i8080 and a 6502 board for this system, I was soon annoyed by always pulling and plugging EEPROMs or even EPROMs to develop the first system software.
I soon started looking for an EPROM emulator. But no available system was good enough. Too expensive, not available, a DIY project in breadboard state, ...
When I found this emulator at Tindie, I did not hesitate long. I ordered it, waited few weeks until delivery and tried it out about 2 weeks ago. It is a great system!
If you write software which fits into a 28pin EPROM (or even a 24pin if you have no problem to fit the adapter into the socket), this emulator might speed up your development. For me, it did. I mostly use 27c64 8k EPROMs.
The SW is available for Windows or Linux (Python based) and allows you to upload your image in *.hex format directly to the emulator. It also allows to store the image in an SPI EEPROM to be available on power-on. If you connect one cable to your RESET line, the emulator can restart your system when the image is loaded into the emulator. If using the SPI EEPROM, for now, the data has to be a multiple of 128 bytes. But if you use the system for development with live upload, this does not matter.
I am now developing my i8080 firmware with this tool and really like the new workflow. Assemble the code, load into the emulator, reset the system. It works as expected. And communication + support from the developer was really great and fast! He is still working on improvements. So you might get more than you buy now. The emulator is worth the price and more. The 3D printed base is one of the nice features, so it is ready to use and less fragile.
Since it is an open source project, it would be great if also other users could support to make further improvements!
Response from My Geeky Hobby | Oct. 23, 2020
Rene, thank you for a great review and a fantastic summary (honestly, I should be using some of it in the product description). I'm glad you find the emulator a useful tool in firmware development, this is exactly how the project started - I needed something to streamline my Z80 development. At this point, I have reports from others using the emulator on 6502, 6800 SBC, and even an HP-71b calculator! :) The hardware is done, now I just add features and improvements based on user's feedback.
