My first EPROM "gizzit" to you is this little binary/ASCII editor and EPROM burner software. Many EPROM programmers will not allow you to even try to reprogram a chip, if that location is not FF, but my own software will allow the attempt. The software is a bit crude but it works. My software has the properties:
The opening screen has just two lines of text which should remain for about 2 seconds. This should remain whilst the computer determines the speed of your computer so that it can correctly time the "burn period" for the EPROM. Then you will be presented with the main menu:
From this menu you can select several options, such as changing the filename (default = "NONAME.BIN") to any filename in 8+3 format. Only numbers and letters are allowed, but don't worry, E-EDIT.EXE will remove anything else you type in, so "Xz@$12a!" will be stored as "XZ12A.BIN". All the commands are single key-stroke commands. EPROM reading and writing both give you the choice of:
There is both HEXADECIMAL and ASCII (text) edit screens. The text edit screen has a green background but the HEX edit screen has the customary dirty grey background.
In either of these screens you just enter "Q" to go back to the main menu. This introduces my first bug: how the heck are you supposed to type the letter "Q"?. Dunno! I will fix it sometime soon, but it's not really all that important. The HEX code for "Q" is "51h" and "q" is "71h". If you step up/down a page or exit & re-enter the edit screen then both the ASCII and HEX display fields will be updated. As I said, it is crude, but it works, and it's free! If you want to download the software then you will find e-edit.zip here. The ZIP file contains sample binary files and the program itself. It is completely self sufficient, it does NOT call any command files from Windows or DOS so it should work on just about anything. It will run on a 4MHz 286 and on a 450MHz Pentium.
Have fun and best regards from Harry