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MiniPro programmer how‐to

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Dennis edited this page Jul 24, 2026 · 4 revisions

This is currently an experimental feature in CRT, evaluating if this brings value and how it can be improved. The feature may or may not be removed in a future version, depending on general user acceptance of its implementation.

  • Go to Configuration tab:
    • Check the Enable experimental mode for MiniPro prgrammer
    • There is no need for you to enable the simulated demo mode, as this is used for CRT development only

What to install on your local system?

If you use Windows then the MiniPro application is distributed with the CRT application, and it can be used out-of-the-box, but if you use Linux or macOS, then you will need to compile the sources for the MiniPro and make the executable avilable in PATH.

Source for MiniPro on Linux and macOS:

Windows

Nothing special needed here as Windows binary included.

Linux

  • sudo apt install build-essential
  • sudo apt install pkg-config
  • sudo apt install libusb-1.0-0-dev
  • sudo apt install zlib1g-dev
  • vi ~/.profile
  • Add at bottom the path for the minipro executable:
    • export PATH="$PATH:/home/user/path-to-minipro-executable"
  • Check from anywhere in a terminal session, that you can execute the minipro application

macOS

  • brew install minipro

This should install everything automatically, but if you need to build it manually, then you can try these steps, and let me know what to change if it does not work (as a help for others):

  • brew install pkg-config
  • brew install libusb
  • brew link libusb
  • vi ~/.profile
  • Add at bottom the path for the minipro executable:
    • export PATH="$PATH:/home/user/path-to-minipro-executable"
  • Check from anywhere in a terminal session, that you can execute the minipro application

How to test an logic IC in CRT?

  • Go to a logic component (e.g. 7406 or 74LS139 or alike) and open the component information popup
    • Click the Test this IC with MiniPro programmer button
    • Click the Run test button - it should finalize almost instantly

How to test a C64 PLA IC in CRT?

  • Go to the PLA component
    • Click the Test this IC with MiniPro programmer button
    • Check both the two Quick (25) and Standard (512) for Test depth
    • Click the Run test button - it should finalize almost instantly
    • Do not run the Full (65536) test depth, as this will take too long and fail (will be fixed in future versions)
    • Click the Run test button

Important note for test results

You can for sure trust the result, if test reports as FAIL... then the IC is for sure broken, but if the test reports as SUCCESS, then you need to pay attention to this fact:

  • Truth-table is tested OK - no issues in that, so logically the IC is working
  • Timing is not tested, so in some cases it could potentially be problematic or fail in the real physical C64, if it switches faster than what is being tested in CRT

The reason for this is that the MiniPro hardware (TL866/T48/T56) is simply not fast enough for this timing test! As a best-guess then the IC most likely will work without any issues in the C64 if tested OK in CRT.

Known issues

We have already discovered an issue with the PLA 65K test taking "too long time" to execute - from ~1 minute to ~5 minutes, depending on system. Jonathan will be investigating this, but ideally we should know first IF this should be implemented in a public version (question above).

There currently is a "Demo mode" checkbox - just ignore that, as this is only needed for Jonathans development :-)

UI is not final and we need to figure out exactly how it should be implemented. Maybe the current as-is is fine for the first public version, but ideas are welcome - does the current UI work well (except that UI stall when testing PLA 65K)?

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