Choosing TL866A vs FlashcatUSB Pro programmer

[spidola]

Hello friends!
I am going to purchase a universal programmer. While there has been a lot of discussion about the TL866A model, there is almost no feedback on supposed to be American made FlashcatUSB programmer www.embeddedcomputers.net/products/FlashcatUSB. I wonder if anyone of you have had experience using the FlashcatUSB programmer and whether the upgraded FlashcatUSB Pro version www.embeddedcomputers.net/products/FlashcatUSB_Pro would be a better choice over the TL866A model in terms of usability and future support?
Thank you!

[spidola]

Due to an overwhelming response to the post, I went for TL866A 

[Daruosha]

You made the right choice 

[alm]

I was wondering if this was spam: a new user with only a single post with a bunch of links to a product that has not been mentioned on the forum before. Not unlike some PCB manufacturers who have posted here in the past. Clearly my suspicions were wrong.

I, as I imagine most people given the lack of responses, have never heart of the Flashcat programmers. Does not mean they are bad, but do not expect much help here if you would run into any problems with them. Support for older parallel E(E)PROMS seems to be much more limited.

[Sarcarean]

@alm - a few things here. One, I am the developer of FlashcatUSB. It has been around for nearly 20 years, has open source software, and it is very popular, as I have produced and shipped over 100K units (including both Pro and Non-Pro).

And to reply to @spidola: nope, you made the wrong choice. FCUSB is superior to TL866A in a lot of different ways. It supports more complex protocols, lower-cost adapters, and is part of a family of devices that all use the same software platform. The biggest difference: TL866A is a USB-Serial interface with a microcontroller. FCUSB Pro on the other hand is a native USB 480Mbit ARM microcontroller with an even faster FPGA design. But as I said above, I also might be biased.

[coromonadalix]

the tl866 are out of the game now, superseded by other models, and they are still lacking many features

i myself should have bought something else ....

[PlainName]

Indeed. The manufacturer's site says:

1. TL866CS/A programmer has ceased production. If there is a large number of sales may be counterfeit products.

2. There is a large number of pirated TL866CS/A programmers in the market. Counterfeit products can not test every IOs of the programmer, and the quality of products can not be guaranteed.

[alm]

The topic starter made their choice in 2017. I highly doubt they are still looking for feedback.

[Veteran68]

Indeed. The manufacturer's site says:

1. TL866CS/A programmer has ceased production. If there is a large number of sales may be counterfeit products.

2. There is a large number of pirated TL866CS/A programmers in the market. Counterfeit products can not test every IOs of the programmer, and the quality of products can not be guaranteed.

XGecu still makes the successors to the TL866, the T48 aka TL866II-G3 and the T56.