I bought a top of the line XELTEK programmer back when they were parallel-port based in order to have one that would fit in my briefcase. I wanted to program Intel 2816's 2817's, (must have been a long time ago, eh?) PALCE29M16, PALCE29MA16, EP6XX, PALCE610H, among others, yet their programmer didn't program any of these devices despite the fact they included them on their component list. In fact, their algorithms destroyed some of these parts.

I found it was VERY much dependent on the speed of the PC, though their doc didn't say anything about that.

I found that their IC testing, an important feature for me, didn't work adequately.

I found that their "adapters" for parts that couldn't be programmed in their programming socket without one were very costly, fragile, and didn't always work.

I found that, when confronted with these problems, their attitude was, "We've got your money. Go to hell."

I bought a Data I/O UniSite and haven't had any reason to curse it.

I've never recommended XELTEK to anyone since then, and, in fact, made certain all my clients were aware of the experience I'd had.

I did, however, get a copy of their algorithm generation tool set, and have used it to generate test vectors with which to test devices that I could test in their socket, which was very many of them, to wit, it's become a reaonably useful device tester.

RE