Some lighting suppliers here (GTE Sylvania?) have a low wattage
(6watt?) UV tube for germicidal use shaped in a U. This is made to be
run with a ballast but can be run with a lightbulb in series instead.
very cheap and nasty (and it works). The same trick MAY work with low
wattage fluorescents - they would certainly run but may not strike
easily.

Nowadays I use a standard single tube fluorescent holder cut down in
length to fit a 20? watt UV fluro. Very rapid for the devices I use
it with (not PICs).


regards

            Russell McMahon

From: Clem Taylor <ctaylor@SRTC.COM>

>I was about to order a $40 EPROM eraser for my PIC16C77/JW based
project,
>but with the new PIC16F877 coming out early next year, I won't have
much
>use for the eraser in the near future.  So, I was wondering if
someone
>could recommend a cheap way to erase EPROMs, or a dirt cheap eraser?
I'm
>only going to be working with two chips, one in the eraser and one
in
>program/debug.  The eraser I was looking at was the DATARASE IIAC,
from
>Walling Co., sold by DigiKey for $39.95. I was hoping to spend <$20.
>Any ideas?