USB to 25-pin parallel “file transfer cable.” I saw someone tossing this out, and through the transparent shell, I could see too many components for a simple USB bridge chip. Conveniently, the IO is broken out for you, power supplied though USB and, it has a USB interface for your new age convenience. Because the software is stored in an external EEPROM, it’s simple to invoke the built in development bootloader — ground the SCL pin (I added a switch) to bypass the external software. Now, if you want to read or reprogram the EEPROM, just flip the switch back.

Something irritated me about not being able to compile assembly language programs for the motorola/freescale 68hc11 on the university public sun xterminals or on my palmTX — so, a lesson in webinterfaces.