I find no helpful documentation on your link (did they forget to do a write up on Useage ?)
Am not a guru on the TL866II+ but your firmware is way out of date, like 6 months or better and the software is somewhat firmware dependent.
To read the chip you have to select the type (27c64, etc) or else it will not read properly under Windows.
Sorry but never tried mine under Ubunto or FreeBSD (my only linux box) so not sure what it needs other than bios chip type.

Thanks.

Yes, I know I can upgrade the firmware. It should perform basic functionality regardless so I won't bother with it for now.

When I do:

1minipro -l | grep 27C64

I get:

1AM27C64@DIP28
2AM27C64@PLCC32
3NM27C64Q@DIP28
4NM27C64Q@PLCC32
5NMC27C64Q@DIP28
6NMC27C64Q@PLCC32
7MBM27C64@DIP28
8MBM27C64@PLCC32
9HN27C64G@DIP28
10HN27C64FP@SOP28
11HY27C64@DIP28
12HY27C64@DIP28
1327C64@DIP28
1427C64@PLCC32
1527C64@SOIC28
16NM27C64Q@DIP28
17NM27C64Q@PLCC32
18NMC27C64Q@DIP28
19NMC27C64Q@PLCC32
20M27C64A@DIP28
21M27C64A@PLCC32
22TS27C64A@DIP28
23TS27C64A@PLCC32
24M27C64A@DIP28
25M27C64A@PLCC32
26TS27C64A@DIP28
27TS27C64A@PLCC32
28TMS27C64@DIP28
29WS27C64@DIP28
30WS27C64@PLCC32

Out of this list, how do I know exactly what type of chip I'm dealing with? Since my chip only has 28 pins I guess I focus on those only? That still leaves quite a few choices...

It seems I can do:

1minipro -d 27C64@DIP28 -D

Which gives me:

1Found TL866II+ 04.2.86 (0x256)
2Warning: Firmware is out of date.
3  Expected  04.2.123 (0x27b)
4  Found     04.2.86 (0x256)
5Name: 27C64@DIP28
6Memory: 8192 Bytes
7Package: DIP28
8ICSP: -
9Protocol: 0x07
10Read buffer size: 1024 Bytes
11Write buffer size: 128 Bytes
12*******************************
13VPP programming voltage: 13V
14VDD write voltage: 6.5V
15VCC verify voltage: 5V
16Pulse delay: 100us

So, but this means that the programmer cannot detect the chip type for me? I have to explicitly tell the programmer what type of chip it will be reading/writing?

So, then my question becomes; how in general do you figure out what type of chip you're dealing with? You just know?

Edit: also, does the "Memory: 8192 Bytes" means there is 8K of memory on this chip?

I m using for years a tl866cs in Linux using the official software , wine and the wrapper made by radiomanV (https://github.com/radiomanV/TL866).

Works perfectly.

Yes, you have to tell it exactly what type of chip you are using. Most often this will be on the top or sometimes the underside of the part.

Most BIOS chips will be 27c256/27c512 or derivatives. So start with those devices in your list.

The command is usually something like:

tl866 -p m27256@dip28 -r out.bin

... Reads a Motorola 27256 dip28 EPROM into out.bin.... finding the right device can be trial and error, but the programmer will warn you if the device isn't correct.

Thanks everyone!

It's working now. I guess you can just use any random device type since the programmer will return the correct type in an error message (as megatron-uk said).

So, it's reading out 64k file and there is clearly data all the way to end (I can see a date at the end of the file). Does the programmer automatically detect the size of the data or is that determined by the device type?

Most times the device type it thinks it is, usually is correct.

I'd verify its the correct chip type before assuming the file is valid though. Normally if it's something like a BIOS chip, not a odd/even pair, and you can see valid text string in the file it's probably okay.

hexdump -C is your friend to look at the file.

Yes, I'm just using a hex viewer to view the contents of the file and I can see all the AMI copyright notices etc so it definitely grabbed the data from it.

I'm just wondering about the size. It has dumped 64k, does it automatically detect the size to be dumped?

You bring up an interesting topic, re. odd/even chips. In this scenario, is the data spread over two chips (interwoven, interleaved) and therefore viewing the data in a hex viewer would be confusing. How exactly does odd/even chips?

If it's say a 27256, then the second part of the device type indicates the capacity in kilobits; 256kbit, so 32kbytes (not all eeprom/EPROM chip types follow this naming convention but a LOT do).

The tl866 device will read the full size of the chip, even if only the first N bytes have anything written to them. You end up with the rest of the data being null, but to th exact size of the device.

If you get a 64kbyte file then you device must be a 27512 or something similar.

Odd/even BIOS images are stored with byte one in the first chip, byte two in the second, and so on. The motherboard interleaves when reading the data from them. If you have devices like this then your hex viewer will show only partial text strings.