A GTK 4 graphical front-end for the minipro open-source chip programmer tool, supporting the TL866A/CS, TL866II+, T48, T56, and T76 programmers. Claude coded UI stuff, some of the tool and added comments.
- Read / Write / Verify / Erase / Blank Check / Read ID — full operation support with a real-time progress bar
- Device browser — searchable list of all supported chips, filterable by programmer type
- Hex viewer & editor — monospace byte grid with inline editing and a diff view comparing read data against a file on disk
- Device Info — shows chip parameters (size, VCC, timing, fuse bits) pulled from minipro's XML database
- Strings — extracts printable ASCII/UTF-8 strings from the buffer, with minimum-length filtering
- Entropy — colour-coded block-by-block Shannon entropy chart to spot compressed, encrypted, or blank regions at a glance
- Histogram — byte-frequency bar chart
- Disassembler — built-in 6502/65C02 disassembler; falls back to
ndisasm(NASM) for x86 16/32/64-bit if installed - Export — save the buffer as raw binary, Intel HEX, or Motorola SREC
- Session memory — remembers the last device, file path, and operation across restarts
- Python 3.10+
- GTK 4
- PyGObject (
python-gobject) - minipro installed and on
PATH - libusb
Optional: ndisasm (from the nasm package) for x86 disassembly.
Clone the repo and build the package with makepkg:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/minipro-gui.git
cd minipro-gui
makepkg -siThis builds and installs both minipro and minipro-gui into /usr, adds a .desktop launcher, udev rules, and bash completion.
After install, plug in your programmer and run:
minipro-guiOr launch it from your application menu.
Install the dependencies for your distro, then run the script directly:
# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install python3 python3-gi gir1.2-gtk-4.0 libusb-1.0-0
# Fedora
sudo dnf install python3 python3-gobject gtk4 libusb
# Then clone and run
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/minipro-gui.git
cd minipro-gui
python3 minipro_gui.pyYou will also need to build and install minipro itself — follow the instructions in its README.
To use the programmer without sudo, install the udev rules:
sudo cp minipro/udev/60-minipro.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm triggerThen add yourself to the plugdev group (if your distro uses it):
sudo usermod -aG plugdev $USERLog out and back in for the group change to take effect.
- Select your programmer type from the drop-down (TL866II+, T48, etc.)
- Click Browse to pick a chip from the searchable device list, or type a name directly
- Choose an operation (Read, Write, Verify, Erase, Blank Check, Read ID)
- For Write/Verify, select a file; for Read, choose where to save
- Click Run — progress is shown in real time
- Use the tabs to inspect the result: Hex View, Entropy, Histogram, Disassembler, etc.
GPL-3.0 — see minipro's license for the bundled programmer tool.