Soldering advice

Now who's mispronouncing words? ;-) lol

Lol Bad_Ad84, I like the use of "decent" - I don't think I could have been that nice to a Willem, even with quotes! ;-)

Get the best iron you can afford (temperature controlled if you can), get some solder and a solder sucker, find a broken electronic gizmo (radio or something) and have a practice. Decent soldering practice would be to heat the pad and component leg, then bring the solder to the heated pad... NOT to the iron. That'll result in dry joints.

As for helping you find a source - it'd help if you said what country you're from ;-)

 

The USB willem I linked to is actually quite good, however when you compare it to proper programmers then it can only be called "decent" in comparison. For the money, the GQ-4X is a bargain and will suit most peoples needs.

However, the parallel Willems are a pain in the ass and way too slow. You need to do mods to the board for certain chips, etc.

 

The problem with the name Willem is that it's now a generic term for a dubious quality programmer, pretty much. Lots of people make programmers with Willem in the title. Try finding a company called Willem, though! It's the Acme of the programmer world! Most of the "Willem" programmers you'll find are board-only. The GQ-4X is just one of those circuit boards bunged in a case - nothing special. And again, it's not a Willem GQ-4X in the sense of a Honda Civic (Manufacturer, model). It's badged as True-USB and sold by MCUmall - a company who sell a lot of dubious quality Chinese low-cost tools.

They're OK for starting out, but I really wouldn't bother. I'd much rather go for a reputable Western company's cheaper programmers to start off - someone like Elnec or Dataman (although Dataman just rebadge Elnec and Chinese programmers, e.g. Leap).

 

Yeah, I have a Elnec/dataman 48pro+

But after owning several para willems and owning the GQ-4X, its not as bad as you make it sound.

Its badged as Willem because it uses all the existing Willem adapters - therefore a good upgrade for someone who wants more speed, more supported devices and still wants to use all the adapters they already have with a USB programmer. But it is made by MCUmall and is a new design (and not open source) - so its not just a chinese clone.

The para ones were crap tho, but the support from MCUmall and the programmer are good for money.

And the reason there are lots of willem programmers is because a guy called willem release the hardware as opensource. The GQ-4X is very different inside to any of those however.


But yes, if you want to spend 12x the price of the willem, go with elnec - I did, but only because I needed NAND support and something alittle quicker. But I dont think most people want to pay $1200 for a programmer when they can make do with a $90 one that is alittle slower (assuming they dont need nand support)