EEVblog #1060 - DataIO Unisite Universal Programmer Teardown - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 26, 2018, 10:11:05 pm
content: Marty! This is the big one, the one I've been waiting for all my life!Teardown of the classic Data IO Unisite Universal Programmer from the 1980's.http://www.dataio.com/Company/About-Data-I-O/40th-Anniversary/1980shttp://dataioinfo.dataio.com/support/manuals.asphttp://www.paulswan.me/arcade/DataIOUnisite.htmhttp://matthieu.benoit.free.fr/dataio_unisite_programmer.htm

author: trophosphere
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2018, 10:59:02 pm
content: The conductive pad reminds me of aconductive adhesive transfer tapethat I use at work which allows for discrete segments of electrical conduction through the z-axis but not across the plane.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2018, 11:25:47 pm
content: I think the waveform gen was mostly to support bipolar parts like PROMs and PALs, which melted physical fuses during programming.ISTR PAL programming specs were very hard to find, and changed as manufacturers introduced faster devices but Bipolar PROM datasheets showed quite complex programming waveforms with current-limits and controlled risetimes.Looks like the relays were just about switching pins to DUT Vcc and GND - presumably they just disabled the pin drivers for these pins.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2018, 11:47:14 pm
content: The Toshiba gate arrays in the Pinsite are mask-programmed, not OTP, so no they did not use previous generation programmers on them.Motorola MC34081P are JFETs.You didn't have to yank out the conductive pad like that; the procedure for replacing them requires the top plastic section of the PLCC adapter to be levered off with a screwdriver, and the conductive pad is stuck underneath it with double sided tape.See the instructions.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 27, 2018, 12:15:15 am
content: Did you happen to catch the QC sticker on the inside with the name "Dave L" ? Has young Dave been in there? ;-)

author: splin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2018, 01:33:45 am
content: The first Intel EEPROM, the i2816 required a 21V programming/erase voltage pulse with a specified 600us rise timeconstant; it had to be exponential - you couldn't just switch it to 21V - see the attached from the datasheet.This was pretty unique as far as I can remember though and was fairly quickly replaced by the 2816A and 2817 which only required 5V. It would be interesting to know how much of the huge cost of making the Dataio programmer truely universal was down to a very few odd corner cases like this.I bet there wasn't an adapter for bubble memories either - but there wouldn't have been much point! Which reminds me that I've still got some Intel bubble memory iSBCs somewhere. Wonder how hard it would be to get them running?

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2018, 01:38:29 am
content: Quote from: splin on February 27, 2018, 01:33:45 amBy the time the Unisite came out, the writing had long been on the wall for bubble memories. It would be really interesting if they supported "seeding" bubble memories, though; that was a remarkably difficult process that would be truly amazing in a universal programmer.A few years later, Data I/O had a programmer specifically for Flash memory cards: it was called the CardPro and there were a couple generations.

author: Hawke
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2018, 04:25:12 am
content: Dave where did you find the software for the programmer. I have a Data I/O Chiplab 32 with only DOS software so haven't really used it much. I did buy the windows software but the company selling it went bust so I've had this state of the art programmer sitting on the shelf for years. I have tried to find the windows based software many times but to no avail. And they are good programmers at the time I bought mine it was the only device that could read fuse protected proms that would burn out on other programmers and it did it in style. There were no devices it couldn't read without bricking them. Very handy when reading the second gen highly protected Holden special vehicle proms to decode what lines they were using etc. Purely for research and only with my vehicles I never cloned them although it could certainly do it.Cheers thoroughly enjoyed the teardown and it was great to see so much early SMD stuff from the mid 80's.

author: orion242
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 27, 2018, 04:51:20 am
content: Wow, great video, impressive gear. Thanks!

author: MarginallyStable
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2018, 05:57:44 am
content: We still have and use one of these at my work. Mainly for old Altera UV erasable CPLDs and EEPROMs supporting ancient test equipment.I have always had an aspiration to design a "universal" programmer with the put any voltage/current on any pin in any waveform concept. After seeing that 4pin driver module, I'm kind of glad I never committed to the project. Glad things are so much easier to program now days.

author: GeorgeOfTheJungle
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2018, 09:02:33 am
content: That programmer would cost an arm and a leg?

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2018, 03:12:09 pm
content: Quote from: Hawke on February 27, 2018, 04:25:12 amYou want Winchip 6.2 for ChipLab, it is available on the web at the usual places. You need something called "Porttalk" to use the software with w2k or XP (I don't think it's been tested under later versions).

author: orin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2018, 11:48:59 pm
content: I wouldn't trust the caps in a Computer Products/Boschert power supply this old, even if they aren't bulging.The ones in the HP 545XX scopes like to spray electrolyte out the bottom _without_ looking distressed. The electrolyte affects the voltage regulation and the output voltage goes high until the overvoltage crowbar cuts in. You get a ticking sound as the supply starts up then almost immediately shuts down again. The fix is to remove all the caps, clean the board thoroughly, then install new caps.Even if the power supply is OK and it's a shorted tantalum causing the problem, I'd still be looking at replacing all the secondary side capacitors in the power supply. In the supply that I fixed, the large primary side caps measured better than the replacements I'd bought, so I put them back in.

author: Campber
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 28, 2018, 03:01:40 am
content: Quote from: trophosphere on February 26, 2018, 10:59:02 pmIt is a tricked out version of that. The pads were custom made by a Japanese company ( Shin-Etsuhttp://www.shinetsu.co.jp) for Data I/O. Different modules used slightly different pad specifications but the basic features are all the same. The gold color comes from the fact that it used very fine gold wires. These wires were aligned vertically through the pad during the manufacturing process. The wires do not merely travel strait from top to bottom but use a uniform radius curve. All the wires also have this curve orientated the same direction. The curves allow the pad to be compressed without kinking the wires as kinks would shorten the wires length and cause them to pull back into the material from the face of the pad during compression/relaxation cycles. Aligning these curves reduces internal stress on the elastic material and prevents unwanted shorting between adjacent wires.Just a trivia foot note: The two to three letters you see written in Sharpie on many of the boards are the initials of the person who did the hand soldering of components on that board. Many of the boards manufactured into the late 90's still needed manual soldering of some components. The ferrite beads on the bottom side of the chip carrier board are an example of this. Manual soldering was needed here because solder paste application was done by silk screening. Silk screening was not a completely clean process with paste often ending up in places not intended. Solder contamination of the gold contact pads on the PWA was considered unacceptable.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 28, 2018, 06:27:33 am
content: Awesome post Campber.Also, welcome to the forum.

author: texaspyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2018, 06:30:58 am
content: I have about a dozen Unisites... if you need a specific adapter, you can't ever find them. Or, if you do they bring big bucks. But, you can find Unisites with that adapter in it for cheap (I don't think I ever paid more than $100 for one). I also have the newer 2900 and 3980 programmers... much smaller and almost as capable. There once was a guy selling pin driver cards for $900 each! But you could buy a Unisite with 4 to 17 cards in them for less than $100You can get a Mass Storage Module for the Unisite. It adds an 80 MB PCMCIA hard drive and replaces the memory card (?)... it has memory on it. If your hard drive dies, note that very few models of PCMCIA hard drives will work in Data I/O machines. Max RAM for a Unisite is 8 MB. The floppies are horribly slow on these machines. It takes several minutes to boot.The RAM cards have a locked PAL chip for address decoding. You can't just add RAM. You had to buy an upgrade kit with the memory and the proper PAL... or build a PAL decoder and reverse engineer the decode PAL from an 8 MB boardEarly versions of the software (up to v5 ?) were also locked to the programmer. The software pakcage shipped with floppies and a PAL. You activated the software by intstalling the PAL in the programmer. The PAL was a registered PAL with a state machine in it. After installing, the software destroyed the PAL by programming all the fuses in it and wrote a serial number to the boot floppy.A common failure on these machines is the floppy controller chip. It's a WD17??... the source for replacements these days is from Atari disk drives. A bad floppy controller will lock up the machine.I was told that fully loaded Unisite with a decent selection of adapters could easily set you back $80,000+.Unisites can't program all chips... they can't do the original 1701 EEPROM. Also they don't do SDA2006 EEPROMs or the MC28xx (?) eeprom. I had to design and build my own programmers for those (used in Mettler and Sartorious analytical balances).

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2018, 06:34:15 am
content: Quote from: Campber on February 28, 2018, 03:01:40 amThanks - I was wondering how the wires in the pad handled compression.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 01, 2018, 04:50:03 am
content: Info from on of the original design team who emailed meQuote

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2018, 06:26:05 am
content: That has got to be one of the most amazing posts in this forum. Fantastic!It does make me a little angry about the stupidity of companies that are prepared to lock away some brilliant technology just for what the managers see as a temporary advantage.I loved the approach of HP with the HP Journal where very often the company was busting to tell the world how brilliant the technology is in their latest product. Genrad did it too.It sounds like that pin processor has some really interesting ideas, and with FPGAs, it might be very useful today. Given the era of the design, it probably had some super-smart optimisations probably worked out by hand to do the apparently impossible.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2018, 06:31:09 am
content: Just found this site full of Unisite documents including the service manual, software, mods. etc.http://www.pestingers.net/pages-images/electronics-other/data-io/unisite/data-io-unisite.htm

author: GeorgeOfTheJungle
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2018, 08:00:49 am
content: QuoteI love this story ^^^^. I wonder if in the first Macs, those of '84, they also had to do something like that?

author: senso
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2018, 01:48:33 pm
content: Quote from: wilfred on March 01, 2018, 07:57:20 amIf no video, Amphour with them!

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2018, 06:34:38 pm
content: Wow that's cool that they emailed you and gave you info and actually know the product.It's not often a company does that now days. Usually you'd just get some generic response that it's no longer supported.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2018, 07:07:01 pm
content: That story needs to be etched on a gold plated PCB panel and placed on a display next to the machine itself.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 02, 2018, 01:16:01 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on March 01, 2018, 04:50:03 amAwesome!Is it possible to do a recorded Skype interview with this guy?

author: Wollvieh
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2018, 05:10:50 pm
content: Saved from one of the Youtube comments on this video:The Data I/O Corp. price list of 1988, provided by the computer museum of the department of computer science of the University of Stuttgart.http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/test_equipment/dataIO/brochures/Data_IO_Price_List_1988.pdfLooks like the empty case started around $18000.The real cost ist hidden in the details: "Programming packs" for certain chip series starting from $1500 and socket adapters from $300 each.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2018, 06:25:17 pm
content: Quote from: Wollvieh on March 02, 2018, 05:10:50 pmProgrammingPakswere only used on the 19A & B, and 29A & B programmers. When the Unisite40 was released in 1986, its only accessories were the pin driver boards, the Site40 DIP module, the SetSite gang module, and the ChipSite module that supported a range of PLCCs using separate sockets. The PinSite module came later, with the updated UniSite that supported the internal hard disk. Using the PinSite, you could use a range of carriers including the PLCC, QFP, LCC bases with the conductive film, or the PPI base that took socket modules. None of those were in a 1988 price list.

author: kc7gr-15
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2018, 07:12:38 am
content: Hawke, I may be able to help with that (I've archived a whole bunch of Data I/O stuff). Here's a link to some self-extracting (to floppies) files which should create the last/latest version of Chiplab software, 6.2.https://ln.sync.com/dl/68135dc30/6begc6tx-qvfw63vj-viirb6e5-jhnwvvefI hope this works out for you. The Chiplab's a nice unit.

author: kc7gr-15
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2018, 07:18:52 am
content: I would add: The MSM will only work with late-production Unisite main boards. These boards are very obvious: They have a pair of 30-pin SIMM sockets in the lower left quadrant.As for the decode PAL for the 8MB upgrade option (also found only on the later production mainboards), it was apparently cracked some time ago. Here's a link for the pertinent file.https://ln.sync.com/dl/d5673af90/5p94f2r7-n33vqmk8-ijpa28gv-9xw9m8a8Happy tweaking.

author: SCSKITS
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2024, 12:11:39 pm
content: I realize that this is a very old thread, but I now have an MSM board for the older version UNISITE with either 1MB RAM or 8MB RAM on board.The board plugs in in place of the expansion RAM board that is located under the main board.MSM boards are also available for the 2900 and 3900 series and also for the newer version UNISITE that has the RAM modules on the main board.Boards are listed on EBAYed