I am a student looking to buy an EPROM Burner (Eprom Programmer) for about $200, so that I can place programs onto 8051 chips. I have a bit of analysis-paralysis: I do not know which is the right one. Can you help me figure out which one to buy?
(e.g. Phyton ChipProg+ for $325 or ICE TECH LV48 for $550 or a used EMP-20 for $??)

I read the scary review
http://www.8052.com/rev001.phtml
which made me hope I do not end up there – it is a 2-3yr old story on EE-Tools EPROM Programmer (RomMax, AllMax). Maybe things have changed.

Also, I may need adapters to put quad chips on it, as well as 20 pin and 40 pin chips. Maxim’s $200 device only works on Maxim chips. I bought a single 8051 chip for $25, which turned out to be old (8749H), and have resigned to a mistake in my purchasing. I bought instead some cheap 20 pin 8051 chips (Philips P87LPC764BN ) for $2 each, but other eprom burners don’t handle them.

I surely don’t want to make a $300 mistake. I am inventing a product, but I am not at the stage where I am committed to any one 8051 design, as long as I don’t pay too much or go down a dead-end. (FYI: I am programming in 8051 assembler language.)