Well this one I picked up (for 2.49 gbp!) does appear to present a standard /dev/parport device in Linux, so anything that talks directly to a normal parallel device file in Linux should work ok - however I didn't have much luck getting the WIllem software in Wine to use it.
So.... I ended up pulling out half the devices in my P4 WIn98 machine which has a dodgy PSU, enough bits removed in order for the system to boot and run Windows - this is the only hardware I have left which has a physical parallel port.
I went through my box of 27c256 and 27c128 chips and found enough blank ones to program at least 3 sets of high/low bios pairs.
First of all I ran the chips from the motherboard through the reader and saved the dumps, so I would have something to refer to later. The first BIOS I tried (http://chukaev.ru54.com/bios/2hlm006.zip) didn't do anything - the board just sat there; no bios beeps, nothing.
The second one (http://chukaev.ru54.com/bios/2hlm008.zip) booted and gave me a working system - one interesting aspect of this BIOS is that it adds a 'configure X Kbytes of extra memory as EMS' option, allowing me to add anywhere from 0 to 3072kb of my 4Mbytes as EMS. Quite neat!
I tried the first burned BIOS again, just to see if the working one had spurred something into life. No luck. I then tried my original AMI chips again and wouldn't you know it, but the damn thing burst into life!
Just look at the thing... I bet it's secretly laughing at me - I have no idea why the original BIOS chips are now working... maybe a higher voltage in the programmer than supplied by the motherboard 'cleared' something. I don't know how that would be possible though.... see for yourselves:
I've decided to stick with the original AMI BIOS that came with the board, as the date code is slightly later (1990 compared to 1989 of the other working one that listed 'EMS' options) and also has a 'Fast ISA Bus' option (8Mhz or 12Mhz) in the setup menu that the earlier one doesn't have.
I have one last set of Headland HT12 compatible BIOS roms to try from that Russian site; so I'll see if they have any additional options or features that are not in either of these two.
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net