Universal Programmers - Adapters, Chips, outrageous prices, and making your own!

[PhillyFlyers]

Hey Guys,


So somehow I'm really late to the party   LOL, a co-worker informed me earlier this year about this site, no idea how I've missed out on all the fun for so long!  I'm an EE, hardware/software developer as my main profession, but I've been a hacker/tinkerer/whatever else since around 14 yrs old..this site is awesome, kudos to Dave and everyone here for making it awesome.


So, as I'm trying to actually get a nice 'workbench' finally put together this year, I first realized I needed to get a decent 'universal programmer' (or a couple)... I ended up picking up:


1) EETools Chipmax 2

2) RT809H (china origin?)





What annoys me most about these programmers, is first you pay a pretty decent amount for the programmer, then they charge you a fortune for just one adapter, and because of chip pinouts, etc, you only get so much coverage with one adapter.  For the RT809H, I can at least say their adapters are priced fine, not insanely marked up, it's just difficult because of the language barrier, to request updates for chips they don't have, etc...


So, I initially purchased this adapter (BGA64) for my EETools programmer right from them, $350.00 they charge you!  And it's actually made by 'compass21.com', chinese manufacturer.  Even worse than that, the socket they use, is a 'pinch type' socket, so each bga pad is 'pinched' by two pins close together, that open up when you press down on the socket, and then pinch back together when you release it.




So you MUST have a bga chip that is 'balled' already to even use this socket, and I actually had it snap a few solder balls of off original chips I bought (ie that I did NOT re-ball myself)...On top of that, the pinch socket sucks, it was so intermittent with it's connectivity, always getting different mangled bytes...



I realized many of these manufacturers actually spell out the pin connections for their adapters, ie the connections from the target socket to the programmers DIP-48 connector....I decided to attempt to 'roll my own'.


I found this company 'AllSocket.com', that makes great socket adapters for all sorts of chip packages, and they make them the right way, where the top just presses down on the chip when closed, which in turn makes the connection between the socket pins and the pads on the board... This particular socket I got from them required no soldering, it's screw mounted to the board, and lines up right to a bga64 footprint... and even better, they will email you the PCB footprint file for free...


I made a quick pcb in eagle, using their footprint, and the DIP48 footprint, and sent off to osh park... (I did it so quickly I didn't even noticed I forgot to get rid of all the wasted/unused pcb around the edges, wasted money!  oh well..)

it works like a champ, and their socket is perfect, and even better being that no soldering was needed, now some of their other sockets do have through-hole pins for soldering, etc, but many too are this style, screw on, no soldering..


anyhow, I did another adapter, for TSOP56 to DIP48 (for the EETools), and it too works awesome....



1) OSH-Park PCB = $35
2) TSOP56 'burn in' socket (solders right to tsop56 pads), $12 each




Buying this adapter from EETools is $250.00...


I thought I would share this with you guys, as I saved a ton of money making it myself, and on top of that, I found AllSocket makes a hell of a better socket than EETools is using on their over-priced product.



So far I have made these two adapters:

1) BGA64 to DIP48 - EETools  (BGA64 layout is for chips that are setup like M58LW032/64 in EBGA package)
2) TSOP56 to DIP48 - EETools (TSOP56 layout is for chips that are setup like M58LW032/64 in tsop package)



I wasn't sure if anyone on here was interested, or cared about this stuff, but I didn't see much discussion on it, so figured I'd if anyone was interested..??



I'll gladly post the eagle .PCB files if anyone wants them...I didn't do a corresponding schematic since I didn't have a part tied to the pcb footprints, so I just wired up straight in a pcb)




here's an example of the socket I used:


AllSocket BGA64 adapter:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/BGA64-BGA-Socket-1-0mm-adapter-Custom-made-socket-Customized-Test-Jig-LBGA64-LFBGA64-VFBGA64-WFBGA64/32758784834.html

[lazarusr]

I'd be very interested in seeing more details on this. I need the exact same TSOP-56 adapter and I don't want to pay the ridiculous prices. How do the 56 pins on the TSOP device map to the  48 pins on the programmer?

[coromonadalix]

Have you thought or heard of the TNM5000 programmer ?   less costly and frequent software updates ... had bought it for 250$ usd on Aliexpress free shipping.

[zero9]

I'll gladly post the eagle .PCB files if anyone wants them...I didn't do a corresponding schematic since I didn't have a part tied to the pcb footprints, so I just wired up straight in a pcb)

I would love to see. Can You post, please?