total newbie question regarding eproms

That's a microcontroller/embedded CPU, not an EPROM. It's also made in several packages, so you'll need to specify the full part number to order them or identify which programmers will work with them.

Motorola (now Freescale, with a crappy javascript website that takes about a minute to look anything up. Grrr) has obsoleted them, so you should seriously consider modding your design for a newer chip. Hopefully, it should be just a matter of changing to a new package & pinout.

I think they should still be pretty available, but again, they're now made in a variety of packages, so you'll need to figure out which ones are acceptable to you. (Full size erasable chips in a ceramic DIP, one-time programmable tiny QIPs, etc)

If you have a sample or prototype, you should copy down all the codes exactly from the chips that're in it.

Once you've figured out the details for your chips, Googling for "eprom programmer" & the full part number for your chip should give you hundreds of suitable programmers at a wide variety of prices. ;^)

Eg:

You should also be able to find lots of programmer kits, used programmers & 'budget' new units on EBay.

Cheers Lionel

has given me a place to get started :)

BuG