TL866 MiniPro Question About Identifying Chips - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: Electro Fan
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2016, 07:57:02 pm
content: I have a TL866A MiniPro. It works fine when reading the contents of a known chip. For example, I can set the Select IC field for ATMEGA328P and read the ASCII contents, no problem.Question: If I don't know the particular chip make/model is there a way to use the MiniPro software to identify the particular chip make/model installed in the programmer?Thanks

author: pelule
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2016, 08:30:10 pm
content: AFAIK only possible for logic chips.

author: Electro Fan
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2016, 10:03:56 pm
content: Quote from: pelule on November 27, 2016, 08:30:10 pmThanks - just to clarify, logic chips = microcontrollers (or something else)? But not PROMs/EPROMs?- fwiw, this would be consistent with what I found using the ID icon in the MiniPro program; with the ATMEGA 328P it shows 1E 95 0F (the signature for the ATMEGA 328P), but with a "TBD" PROM it shows FE FF FE (which doesn't seem to mean anything very specific)---The problem seems to be that without knowing the chip make/model you can't specify the chip/make model in the MiniPro program, and therefore the MiniProp program and TL866 can't read the chip.... or maybe there is another process within the MiniPro program for IDing a chip, and then reading it?

author: pelule
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2016, 10:14:15 pm
content: Quotelogic chips = like TTL Logic Family 74xxx or COMS 4xxx chips, that chips have defined pins for VDD and GND.At an unknow chip you normally don't know anything, so you are not able to supply or read a CHIP-ID.Just one example:If you supply a CMOS based IC at any pin without connecting it to VDD (= Vpin > VDD) you risk a latch-up.

author: Electro Fan
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2016, 11:19:15 pm
content: Quote from: pelule on November 27, 2016, 10:14:15 pmThanks... new question: are there some chips that somehow don't have defined pins for VDD and GND? If so, what are some examples of such "non-logic" chips? Thx

author: pelule
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 28, 2016, 06:59:09 pm
content: We should be clear in the meaning od "defined pins"In my meaning the position of that pins is the same, over all manufactors and products, a kind of a quasi industrial standard.For sure any IC has defined VDD/GND pins (described in the related data sheets).But my understanding is, you don't know the details, but you know where the VDD and GND pins are.Like the 7400, the 7408 or the 7410, all have VDD at pin 14 and GND at pin 7 because all are part of the 74xx TTL-Logic family.This required a high number of different manufactors, a lot of products in that family and also many customers/users.That you find on memories (EPROM, ROMs, SRAM, DRAM), Logic chips (TTL, HC-TTL, CMOS) and older programmable logic chips (GAL/PAL).

author: Electro Fan
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 29, 2016, 12:12:38 am
content: Quote from: pelule on November 28, 2016, 06:59:09 pmI understand now. Thanks