Xeltek Superpro on X64 Windows

The older Xeltec range of USB Eprom programmers do not work on 64 bit versions of windows, since, according to their own website “working on 64bit platform requires tremendous effort from our side“

So to save their programmers from all of this tremendous effect, here is how to make it happen

N.B. This has been tested on my PC using my Superpro 280u with Windows 7,8 and 10. It has also been used sucessfully by other users on their machines – it should work for you, but everything is done at your own risk!

Requirements

In the download file, Here,  you will find the signed driver and support files.

Method

Xeltek use a standard USB interface chip, an Ez-USB FX2, originally made by Anchor chips, who were taken over by Cypress.

Fortunately, they only seem to have made a single change to the reference driver that was issued by Anchor / Cypress, so as long as a 64 bit version of that driver exists then it should be possible to use the eprom programmer on a 64 bit OS.

A clever guy has already created a 64 bit version of the driver to use with some other hardware that utilises the same chip and also sorted out the necessary inf files to allow you to install it on newer versions of windows. I made a small change to that inf file, so it recognises the identity of the chip within the Superpro programmer, and that can be used install the driver. 

Another helpful guy, Doug, has now signed the driver file so that you no longer need to do any trickery to let Windows allow you to use the driver – many thanks to him.

Finally, you need to make one change to the SP3000.EXE to allow it to work with EZUSB.SYS (rather than their version XEUSB.SYS), and for this you will need a hex editor. I use XVI32, a free download from Here. Using this search for the text “Xeltekusb-0” (on the latest version it is at offset 0x9B344). This is the name of the driver that it wants to use, so we need to change this to “Ezusb-0” and then pad the extra characters out with 00’s (Hex 00, not characters!).

Save this change and coupled with the driver you should now be able to use your Superpro on the 64 bit version of windows.

Troubleshooting

I heard from one user about a problem he experienced with the signed Xeltec drivers. So in case you are having the same problem :-

“My new PC has windows 10 installed as UEFI. Installing it that way enables secure boot by default and saves the default keys to your motherboard. Secure boot adds another layer of driver authentication, which causes the Xeltec patched driver to fail.

In order to fix this, you need to disable secure boot (which is motherboard specific).

Once disabled, the driver plays nice. Only caveat – your system is now (technically) susceptible to rootkits and other forms of malware that attack your drivers. Not a huge concern if you’re not using fishy software.”

Thanks Bill