Progress with the Mac GUI application for Minipro (GUMP) : Use a TL866 programmer to program ROM chips

The passage of time is frightening. I see that it has been three years since I first posted about GUMP. I had expected a greater response. 

In the mean time I've continued to use my GUI wrapper for minipro when burning ROM chips with my TL866 clone because that has been far friendlier than using the command line. It takes away the need to remember the switches or type the path to the binary.

I've used one or two other of my apps in conjunction with GUMP - Peep for 'hexeditor'-style viewing of the data read from a chip or checking the binary to be written. And a makeshift script for taking one file (or a blank file padded with FF or 00) and incorporating a smaller file at a given start address. 

This has all been very clunky and disjointed. Plus there are some other features that I wanted. For example, a lookup for the supported device names and a list of 'favourites' to save having to keep a note of which device name I last used for the chips that I burn regularly.

A new version

So I've been doing the work to roll all of this together and add the new features. The result is a new version of GUMP. I'm still testing and developing, but it's now in a state where I can call it 'beta' and unleash it on anyone who wants to try it.  [update 22 Jul 24] Now released as a free beta

Above the tabbed area is the 'device' field. You can type the name of your chip if you know it, or press the search button, type a partial string, see results and choose the one you want. 

Once selected you can add it to your 'favourites' which are available in a drop-down list at any time.

Below that is the tabbed area. The 'Read' tab obviously allows you to read the chip and see the data in a 'hexeditor' style viewer. You can export this to a file if you want. The 'combine' checkbox allows you to use the data read from the chip as the starting point to build the output data.

Below that is a console area which relays the minipro output. This has minimal value but at least tells you whether the operation succeeded or failed, and sometimes why.

The 'Write/Verify' tab displays the data that you'll be writing to the chip. You can open a binary file, specify a start address, optionally combine this with the data read in from the chip and padd it to a certain size (although a switch allows you to suppress the error from minipro if it's shorter than the capacity of your chip). You can edit this byte by byte. 

There are a few useful switches presented as checkboxes. 

The Prefs window allows you to specify the location of minipro. This must be installed separately but if you use homebrew that's as simple as brew install minipro You can specify the full path here if minipro isn't in your search path.

[update 22 Jul 24] Now released as a free beta

Mac graphic user interface (GUI) application for TL866 programmer (minipro wrapper)

I can't believe that no-one has done this already but as far as I can see, we Mac users have to use the command-line when using our TL866 programmers.

That's absolutely fine; the man page exists, is short and easy to understand.  Purely to save myself from trying to remember what options I need to use, or last used*,  I've built GUMP (Graphic User-interface for MiniPro) which is just a wrapper for the minipro command**

It's pretty basic and a bit clunky, it just allows Read (save contents to file), Write and Verify with a few checkboxes for some of the minipro options. 

In time, I'll add anything that I will personally find useful and maybe build a 'hexedit' viewer into this app (in the screenshot it's my hexedit-style app Peep which is displaying the contents of the ROM, as saved to a file by GUMP.)

I'm throwing this out there so that if anyone else is interested in having this, I'll tidy it up a bit and make it publicly available. (Comment below or contact me using the usual channels.)

* or having to type the string somewhere and then trying to remember where I saved it

** which you need to install separately. However, if you already have homebrew, this is as simple as: 

brew install minipro