Incorporated in 1982, PEmicro was founded by a single question - with so many configurations of programmable memory being made by so many different manufacturers, was there a way to build a single general purpose tool to both erase and program all of these EPROM devices? As a Boston University professor, Dr. David A. Perreault addressed this question by designing and building the world's first general purpose programmer. It was based on the Z80 microprocessor and provided the ability to reconfigure pinouts.

Using software control it was able to turn outputs on/off and featured a configurable patch panel for setting up the proper pins to be programmed on each device. The configurable design allowed engin ...