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EEprom programmer

A few attempts were made recently to solder up a "Data Flash Board".  While I eventually produced some working modules, there were moments when I doubted the authenticity of some of the components including the voltage regulator and the WinBond W25Q32FV 4Mb flash memory chips.

I de-soldered a couple of the data chips and replaced them, which resulted in working modules, but I did keep the "faulty" chips and started to look about for a means to test them. Sure enough the hardware is pretty ubiquitous.

More problematic is software that will work on a range of platforms (e.g. I use Linux Mint). After looking at commercial solutions I settled on AsProgrammer and the CH341a Programmer.

I had to swap out to Windows, but I'm still hopeful of finding a software option that might work on a saner OS. The linux program "flashrom" works fine, but it does not appear to have a current GUI.

I think problems programming these little fellows nearly always comes down to a driver issue, and chasing OS upgrades is not fun as usually recompiling the drivers from source code is required.

In my case after a bit of fiddling around I was able to read a chip, blank a chip, write to a chip and recover data from a chip. Oh, and the two chips that I thought I had fried? Still working!

I count that as a success (notwithstanding the stupendous amounts of time invested faffing about with these EEProms, the software, the drivers, the emulators, etc.,).