MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Still... I feel new here,

It's incredibly simple for most roms. If you post specific questions I can answer them but for 90% of them it's a matter of reading the manual for your programmer, general practice and having a recent romref and promref file to compare compatible chip types. If you don't have a programmer, nobody can really tell you which is best to get because nobody has bought and tested them all. It's not like an iPhone case where things are common and cheap and you can just buy them up and consumer report them. You'd be well over a grand just for the base of a lot of choices, before your first adapter.

It really depends on the range of stuff you want to dump if you want to talk about the single best programmer choice "for everything". I don't think there is even a single choice. At best you would end up with at least 2. Most ranges of chips will need at least 2 different programmers. Best bang for the buck I've found is a newish Wellon + used but perfectly working BP Micro from the 1200 or higher series. And even with that I can't do some socketed stuff like 2708 without an adapter.