This pre-year 2000 reference appears in the TOP series "supported IC list" for the ATMEL EEPROMS. It seems a bit confusing since we are not aware of any design changes to the Atmel AT29C256 since its original release by Atmel. Could you please explain why this limitation exists, or possibly even check into the validity of this limitation for us.
This is extremely important, as a limitation such as this would prevent the use of these programmers by an extremely large consumer base.
Asked manufacture of TOP programmer. They found the programmer just does not work on AT29C256 made after year 2000. They did some investigation and they found they can not fix the problem in software right now. And need some time to fix it.