Hi I just picked this up on uh eBay it's one of these little uh Universal programmers I got it for like 55 bucks. Australian delivered and it came with a whole bunch of adapters and stuff. So I thought I'd just do a little quick video. just a overview of just uh, trying to install and use it for the first time.

and uh, yes, of course we'll take it apart. So this is the mini Proo TL 86 and uh, it's it's from a Uh company called Auto Electric. CN a Chinese company which um, seem it seems to be um, specifically designed for like the automotive uh eom flashing Market You know that kind of thing where you enhance your Uh car by refeshing the Eom and stuff like that, but you know it's a regular like little very compact Universal programmer that you know they claim supports ah, you know, like 13, 12, 13 ,000 parts or something like that. It does support Pi and at Mills and serial eoms and flashes and old style eoms and all that sort of jazz.

So anyway, um, for the price, absolutely uh, amazing. And here's the box that uh, comes in. it's rather professional I like it. it's not like it.

You know a lot of stuff from Uh eBay Chinese Sellers: You just get it wrapped in a bit of bubble wrap and thrown in a envelope. it uh, it rather instills a bit of confidence. It's uh designed for Windows uh, 7 and there's two different Uh models apparently I've got this one. the TL 86, Cs and I believe the TL 86a I didn't uh realize this until I actually got it.

but the um, it looks like the A version actually has the Um in circuit serial programming uh Port as well on it so mine, uh, mine doesn't have that. so I don't know whether or not it's just a a connector inside or something like that. I guess we'll find out when we open the thing. and for an extra couple of bucks.

Um, for like less than 10 bucks extra? I got uh, these these little adapters here? Fantastic. Why not? I Thought: For the price, we've got a couple of Uh Plcc uh packages here 44 and a uh TW and a 32. and we've got a couple of these little uh adapter boards for um, soldering chips directly on if you have to. You know, if you're desperate and you really need to wire it up, you don't have a zif socket or whatever.

No worries, just sold it directly onto those and it came with a couple of uh, two different uh width uh s so8 um packages with the zif socket, the proper zif socket on it. I mean you know you wouldn't use this. uh I'm sure they're not the greatest quality. you wouldn't use them for production, uh, programming or anything like that.

but gee, you know for um, yeah, I think less than 10 bucks included all those adapters. So I thought why not? and uh, the unit itself. It comes with a uh, 40 pin. um, it's supposedly it is branded 3M but if that's a genuine 3M text tool socket then I'm a monkey's uncle.

But uh. anyway, good enough for one of these lowquality programmers. It feels pretty good, so let's crack it open, have a look inside, and uh, after we do that, then we'll uh, hook up the software and give it a B. Four screws on the bottom there.

I do actually know what it looks like inside because the sell actually, uh, proudly showed off the internal circuitry and it looked, uh, quite. Compact and uh, quite high quality. So um, here it is. Bang! We've got two board construction there, some standard, so packages on there.

We'll take a look at the parts in a minute. Standard: uh, so 23s along here uh, and some protection diodes as well. the LEDs sticking up through the top of the board there, and it looks like the board boards are stacked together using uh, dualway standard1 in headers there. there's actually three of those by the looks of it down in there, and uh, that looks rather quite nice.

I mean the at first glance, the soldering looks pretty good. Let's have a look on the bottom here. Aha, of course they've shaved the uh, shaved the number off. As they do, we might be able to, uh, put a bit of spit on that later and uh, try and reveal what that is.

But lovely, you know, array of uh, uh, protection diodes down in here. or they protection uh, Zenas or something. Anyway, um, it looks like we got double-sided load on both of these and the soldering actually looks really quite nice. I'm uh, quite quite impressed by this, especially for the price.

I mean you know, but you can get this under $50 delivered if you don't get the adapters. uh, like $45 delivered or something. Anyway, it looks like we've got some huge inductors here for the Uh DC to DC Supply they look really, really, quite nice I I can't separate those be I'll have to desolder that. so no, it's not a problem.

Okay, that was a little bit annoying I had to uh, desolder the two LEDs out of there as well. just uh, pull them out and desolder them uh from the bottom and uh, was able to sort of use my third hand to C this board to separate the boards while um, desoldering those two pins and Tada And there you go. There's all the Uh switching transistors. They would be mosfets I'd be uh assuming for each pin.

I mean this is, um, certainly not a you know, it's not like a daak pin uh Universal program or anything like that, but it's uh, it's going to be good enough. It's going to have a reasonable amount of flexibility and we should be able to check that in the Uh software perhaps. And that un populated J1 connector down there obviously the in Circuit programming Slj tag um port for our chip here which uh has had the number rubbed off the bastards. but uh, we'll get a bit of spit on that in a sec.

Zing gong Zing gong Fourth month 2012 but I really like the construction of this thing. No problems at all. and uh, of course, if you have a look down here, we've got the connector for the in circuit serial programming. So I'm assuming that you can just, uh, solder a connector onto that.

so I might, uh, do that and uh, maybe I don't know if I'll test the in circuit programming capability today, but uh, it? I assume that that's the only difference, is that the Uh is that the actual connector is populated CU I Don't see any other missing uh Parts on here unless there's like a firmware uh, difference between the two or something like that. So it's time for a bit of spit. So let me get some magic spit on there. and uh, no, they've done a they've done a cracking job there I think they've done a really good job on that one I don't know.

I'm probably you know going to assume maybe it's a little arm processor or something like that that we saw in Universal programmer tear down a month or two back. Um, but yeah, I don't know you could reverse engineer that of course. uh without too much difficulty. but I won't bother.

and all of the drivers on the uh top of the board here 74 HC 373 So octal latches so they're driving those with a single parallel bus and then latch in the individual lines for each of those. and there's another two of those on the bottom here as well. And they've got a 74 Hc1 164 There got a voltage regulator down there that's a no surprise. a triple 17 low Dropout rig and up here we've got um a there you go Motorola 3463 Absolute classic.

That's how they've got the uh cost down on this thing. They've uh, yep, there's two of those 34063 DC to DC converters. So you know, pretty cheap. So it's not surprising that they can get, um, the cost down on these things because there's not.

You know I mean there's a huge amount of uh, transistors and diodes and stuff in there, but you know, they're pretty darn cheap. Apart from that, we got, you know, some HC series logic, some cheapest chips, DC to DC converters and the main micro and that's it. And the zif socket of course. But what it's all about with these uh Universal programmers is the software.

So I've whacked in the little disc here and we've got Minir proo V580 setup I don't know what that Chm file is. so let's run the the setup program and uh, give it a B, Come on there we go. Welcome! Welcome to use Minipro Tl6 866 Programmer D/ Minipro Oh yeah, well install Bam o Lots of app mail files I saw there driver Yeah we'll install the driver as well. not a problem.

Install Device USB Driver Mini Proo USB Driver Yep, we'll install that I think we're going to get a lot of Ch English with this one folks I would expect a lot of Chinglish in store. Would you like to install it? Always trust and I won't always trust. but yeah I'll Trust it this time let's go and that only took a minute and we're ready to use. So let's uh, call it up Mini Pro Programmer bang we're in.

Check it out there it is beautiful Works a treat hasn't detected of course cuz I haven't plugged it in so let me do that and we give it a go see if it detects. Yeah it detected it's installing the uh software? Please please refresh refesh Firar there we go. We got some great Chinglish there I Love it! Please reflash Fire Wear firmware obviously. Um, why it's telling us to reflash the firmware I don't know, but uh yeah, it's telling us how to do that.

We have to go up into what tools? Yeah there we go. Ref fles firmware. There we go. They've got it correct there.

but uh, it certainly automatically detected it. There it is. Hardware Interface TLS 86 CS So it's the Cs not the A version version 3.25 So let's run that system. self check I saw up here and please remove IC on 40 pin socket.

No worries. Test. Oh bang Successful! Hey, look at this. Here we go.

Hey this there you go. This is going to tell us, um, how many channels it's actually got There We go. There's the VPP programming voltage and that looks like it's switchable. not through all 40 pins of course.

but it's uh, switchable through 16 different pins. That means they've when when they designed this Universal program they obviously you know looked at the variations of the pinouts of the various chips available that they wanted to support and determined well. we need 16 different pins for the VP VP P the programmable VPP programming voltage. So there you go and they've done a similar thing here with VCC I'm assuming how many channels.

So with the VCC there we go. 24 so you can switch the uh main chip power through to 24 different pins I'm assuming and ground. they would have done a similar thing. So it's not a true Universal programmer that there you go.

25 pins for switching ground through and hey, it looks like it does overcurrent protection testing and on on the VPP and the VCC that's that's really neat. Um, I'm assuming that it you know has a transistor and it shorts out the Uh Rail and uh determines that the current limit is working. neat I Like that. Beautiful.

All right. I Could test that all day. All right. So let's have a look at the rest of the programmer here.

They've got language up the top. There we go. You can switch between Chinese and uh Chinglish it's not I Think we're going to get a bit more? uh Chinglish in here before the video is out, but it's got all the basic stuff. It's got the uh edit window.

Can we edit that? E No. Oh yeah, there we go. Yep, tells us it's red. Not a problem.

So great. That works a treat. Okay, so we can edit the edit window and uh, data memo buff, select code, memo, data memo, and the config fusers. There we go.

There's all the config fusers for what have we got we've got by default. they've selected a Pick 18f 450 so that looks that looks like it's doing the business there. I Like that all your configuration bit so you can go in and individually set all your configuration bits. Let's set.

let's try say an app mail one. Let's choose a how do we choose an read ID C Calculator Ah, just calls up Windows calculator. That's it. Um so select I See there we go.

Search and select Or you can do looks like you can do flash detect Aha auto flash detection. There you go. So if you've got a flash memory device 8 or 16 pin, you can whack that in There and uh, have it auto detect. Okay, that's neat, but we'll search and select.

Let's look at the devices that are supported here. You can select between all ROM flash nonvolatile Ram there all your manufacturers, Lots of them. I mean a lot of them are going to use identical algorithms and stuff like that, but um MCU Mpu There we go. Atmail.

The Atml support is the 1898, Uh, 89, series 1890 and it looks like a pretty comprehensive list of all the At Megas and At tinies and that's where it ends. Um, so let's look at uh, Microchip. Here we go. It does.

Uh so 10, 12, uh, 16 and series pick but that's pretty neat. DL Um PL plld Gal C plld Atmail one device lce. It's got a few lattice devices in there, but nothing much. SRAM SD Ram Neat.

But uh, of course you know most of the time you're going to use this with uh, eoms, old Eoms or E proms or something like that usually so it supports all the usual culprits. That's quite neat. So what I want to do there is just go into uh at mail and just look at the configuration fuses. So let's choose.

you know, an 18, Mega, 168 or something? So let's select that and there's the code, memory, data, memory, and config. There you go. Nice. It all all seems to be there.

Um, whether or not you would trust one of these $50 programmers you know? I Mean it's probably good enough, but you'd expect the odd bug perhaps or something like that. Um, it's not as good as the vendor tools of course. And if you have a look around here, there's the ICP Port So if we click on that using ICP interface program, make sure. Yeah! Power supports 128 milliamps maximum so it looks like you can uh select so it can generate a voltage on the Icsp port I'm assuming to Gen to power your uh particular product.

Um, so yeah, it's actually allowing me to do that. So um VCC enable. You can turn the voltage off and on there. so I'm assuming it will allow us if if we sold her on that connector.

we can probably do in circuit serial programming as well. Now I've plugged in a real Uh 40 pin pick chip here I've got to pick 16 F877 in a 40 pin dip package and I've selected that there 16 F877. It was certainly in the library and uh, let's see if we can. uh uh, I Don't know if this one's actually programmed with anything or not.

but uh, let's look at the configuration fuses. Can we read the Uh configuration fuses at all? Let's uh, let's have a look. We can program it up here. We can erase it so we can read from the chip.

we can fill it. we can verify so it's doing all the usual stuff. blank. Check read: ID So yeah, there we go.

I Just read the ID there and it got chip ID um 04 d uh Rev 03 I'm assuming that is the correct one I'd Have to look up the uh microchip information to uh, have to actually verify that but it certainly Reddit and if I disconnect it, let me pull the chip out. Let's read the ID again n it's reading zero. So if I whack it back in and boom, put the zi socket down. Yep, so it's reading that P chip.

Not a problem at all. so let's read it all in. Read from Chip please. Ah, please.

refresh. Reflash The Fire Firear Bummer. Um I wonder why out of the box? it's making me ref flesh the firmware so it looks like we can't really do anything. We probably can't program it either until we reflash that firmware.

I'm assuming um, oh, serial number. Here we go. Ah, there we go. Auto Serial number.

There we go, we can do auto serial number. It does have that feature that I was talking about before. so brilliant. Random serial number time mode default.

Excellent. Ah, great stuff. Okay, now let's reflash the firmware shall we? I'll disconnect my uh Pck chip just just in case. And here we go.

Fingers crossed. Reflash Firmware Attention Please carry on this upgrade operation and computer reliably guaranteed the computer's power supply. Blah blah blah blah blah. Um, it's a TL 866 CS Current firmware is 3.25 eight click reflash to upgrade.

Doesn't tell us which version we're upgrading to, but well here we go. Um, ref fleshing fire Yeah. Aapse time erasing. Okay, hope it doesn't brick it if it bricks it I won't be happy I've done my 50 bucks refeshing the Fireware Successful.

Neat. Okay, well let's see if we can read our chip this time. put my pick back in read: ID Yep. Working a treat.

Let's read the chip here. We go there we go. It's telling us to put it in and make sure you get code, memory, data, memory config, fuse user ID and read boom Done! That was quick and it read it all in. not a problem, you know.

I've got nothing useful to program into this, but we can just test that it verifies and stuff like that. So let's go up to verify here and verify cuz it read in all of the config, fuse stuff and things like that. So yep, bang it verified. Now let's actually test that and go in here and modify say Let's uh, disable uh Brown out detection there.

so let's disable that. And right So I've disabled that now. it should not verify. It should tell us that there's an error.

There you go Bang. Got it. Memory era Config: Yep. Continue marked.

Don't know what marked is? It works. That's a bit of a sanity check. Not a problem, It's got all the Um you know all these functionality you expect of a good Universal programming software I like it. So let's uh, program this Pck chip and we've turned off the uh, uh, the brown out there and programming elapse time, blah blah blah.

it's taking its time I can't remember off hand what size this 18f 877 is like 8K or something 16k. It's taking a bit of time, but apparently this advertisers itself is being fast and you can go to the Um. There's a chart on the eBay sellers page and they had like oh, I can do a 4M flash chip in you know, 10 seconds and stuff like that soar. You know it does actually promote itself as being reasonably quick so, but for a oneoff, you know you're not going to use this thing as a production programmer.

really. I Mean you know if you're doing critical production stuff, you wouldn't be using a $50 programmer, but you know, so it's speed isn't that important for just oneoff stuff, which most people will use it for. But yeah, no problem. Program that.

Just fine and dandy. Now there's one interesting thing I've noticed here when I'm switching through all these uh ROM flash stuff I don't notice any 256 K variants. they're all 128 or 512 and it just so happens that I do have an Atml uh 27827 C uh 128 in dip 28 package so I've got that in the socket there. It's exactly the same.

It's it's really old. It's like 1988 vintage. but uh, I Whack that in there and let's read: Boom. Yes, we actually got it.

Okay, there we go it. Read that. No problems at all. So and here we go, staring me in the face.

Check device ID There it is. So you can just disable that. So not a problem if you've got an unsupported uh chip and you're not. It's the same pin out and same type and everything like that.

Just disable that and you shouldn't have any problems. So verify After there we go. and I've read in the data and I do remember kind of re writing a sequence of data in there. Um, this was many, many years ago when I used to sell Eom programming software way way back.

Um, when I had my own little software business and uh yeah, it's um, I believe that's the data. it's still in there I would have programmed that in 90 ah, 93 or something like that perhaps. but uh, it's a 988 vintage chip. Anyway, what I'm going to do is I'm going to fill this sucker with uh, let's fill it with just random data Shower value FX Random.

Here we go. Let's just fill the whole thing with random data. There we go. I'm going to see if I can program a 1988 vintage at M A27c 128.

So let's give it a go. I Like that? Check. Check this out. You can actually, um, change the Uh VPP voltages.

It looks like you can't enter them, but you can select different ones at least. So that's so you can at least do some margin testing there. VCC Verify There you go. You can test it at um, lower margins, lower voltage margins if you want.

That's really quite nice. Pulse delay: Okay, you can. You've got a little bit of control over there over your programming information. That's pretty good anyway.

I Want to program this sucker here? We go. Programming Chip: Are we ready? You bet. Oh no, of course it's not. Uh, it's not erased d A need NE Aray this is a freaking Eom.

But here we go: I do have a uh blank. um AMD uh 27c 128. So I've got that selected in there and I've already read it. it is actually blank.

Read: There we go so it's got it. Looks like it's blank. Well, I could do a blank check Here we go. Go: Where's the blank check option? Blank Check: There we go blank.

Ah no no H Hang on device ID Check It doesn't really like that at all. Blank Check I Don't know it's the exact type, but it is empty. There you go. So I'm going to try and program that sucker so we'll fill it with random Gunk again and give it to go.

I Don't know this is a uh, there's no date code on that one so that's interesting. Let's pop it open over and uh, ah, 9011. There you go. So 1990 vintage? Let's put it back in and let's give it a go.

Uh, here we go. Program and fingers crossed: Don't do the device I ID Check. Bugger that off. But will it program? ah over current protection? Actually, no external short circuit IC Reverse or damaged.

No something's going on there folks. But of course I Just noticed that uh, this has 12.5 volt programming voltage written on it and uh, by selecting that device and Library it had 13.5 volts. So Vdd right? No, let's no. let's whack that to five I don't I don't like that.

Let's leave it at five Five and five for verify and write and 12.5 volt for the programming voltage. Let's give that a go. Pulse delay. Let's up the pulse delay I Don't know.

Let's double it 200 micros. It's not going to hurt. so let's Pro Let's program that again. Do a blank check.

make sure it's blank. Yep, it's still blank. and let's program programming stop. No overcurrent protection again.

Fail Now I've actually got a National Semiconductor uh, 27 C16 here. And as I noted before, there were no 250 uh Six options. But there are also no Uh 27c, um, 16 options either. Like it's you know, regardless of the manufacturer you choose, it looks like it has 128k and 512, that is.

You know that's ridiculously limiting I Don't like that at all and you know you've got I Mean it's expecting now to see a 28 um pin pin device in there and it's not crazy easy. So if it can't uh, support 24 pin eoms I mean they're all 28 pin. Let's go through them. they're all Dip 28 Dip 28.

It only supports Eoms at a 28 pin and 32 pin. Are you kidding me? All right folks, here we go. Hold on to your hats. I found um, the device uh support list.

There's the URL and it does support all of, um, those uh devices which I was trying to do. Let's let's go to. AMD For example, look 276b there's the two. Yeah, there's a well, there's a H 256 but uh, it's so it's Look at all these different devices which weren't in my included um software.

so I'm not sure if yeah, look Tsop 44 Tsop Dip 24. Look all these different packages so there's a hell of a lot more devices this thing supposedly supports than what came in the software. I'm going to have to investigate this, see if there's some sort of update or something I can get. Yeah, here you go folks.

I Just downloaded and installed the latest Uh software same version 5.80 that I was using before I believe but it seems to have all the device support in it. so I don't know why the included CD didn't have it. But look, if go into ROM flash AMD Boom here it is. Look, there's the 2716 I had before in the dip 24 that I couldn't get and heaps more than we had before.

Brilliant! And now if I plug my uh 1989 vintage National semiconductor it's got the exact type the Nmc 27 C16, Q and uh yeah I've got the the Q version so it's even got that in there. Fantastic! So I can read that. Yeah bang, let's read: Oh there we go. F F FF it's blank, still blank.

check Yep, it's blank. So let's uh, fill the sucker up. see if we can program this. one may or may not be able to 21 volts.

These are the old 21 volts programming voltage so it supports these Fantastic I Like it. Here we go. fingers crossed Program: Yes, it's doing it. It's doing it.

Ripper a 1989 vintage Eom. Oh I assume it's going to work. Ah, there you go. Beautiful! We just programmed a 23 odd 23 24 year old um 21 volt ancient Eom.

brilliant and let's verify that. uh, verify there it is. Yep, verify finished. No problems at all and we can read that back in.

Ah, read: finished. Fantastic! I Love it. There you go. Absolutely spot on.

So there you have it. There's the Auto Electric Mini Tl866 CS programmer that you can get for under 50 bucks on eBay and uh it's it's not bad at all. Few little you know few little niggling issues, but it seems to have quite wide uh device, uh, support and uh. The hardware is pretty decent quality and the software does pretty much everything you'd expect.

Yeah, could do a lot more testing, but H this just covers the basics. It does seem to work. So I think that's pretty much a winner in the uh, low, the low price. There you go 258 Yan Woohoo! You can get a Barbera do Powerful software, smooth, easy use, cheap generic programming.

fantastic and you can see that inside. Oh, their inductors are a little bit different to what we had on ours. There you go. But anyway, I think not a bad quality little program.

Amazing what you can get for 50 bucks these days. and uh, ultra low power consumption, portable super performance, best over voltage overcurrent protection so it protects your devices and the programmer. Ah, and you can get it. Um, with all the uh, those little adapters thrown in for um, you know, next to NX as well.

so that's pretty impressive. and it seems like a pretty PR quick programmer as well. So anyway, um, worth having in your toolbx at that sort of price. just in case you need to read an old Eom or a Serial Eom or you know, hack around with products or do something like that or even for pick or uh, atmail programming.

Worth a look. So anyway, if you want to discuss it, jump on over to the Eev blog forum and I hope you enjoyed it. Catch you next time.