What change would like to see? Use this new release of ArduinoISP.pde.

Why? Supports EEPROM images > 256 bytes.

Would this cause any incompatibilities with previous versions? If so, how can these be mitigated? No incompatibilities expected.

Can you separate out the EEPROM fix from the other changes in the patch?

Here is a somewhat lighter patch. It fixes writing to EEPROM > 256 bytes. I moved a buffer fill from program_page() into write_flash() and write_eeprom(). I also fixed read_eeprom() to handle EEPROMs > 256 bytes. I validated the patch using an Arduino NG with ATMEGA8 processor to write flash and EEPROM on a ATMEGA386 chip.

I updated to the latest code from rsbohn here: https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/commit/3942e85c2c513ee773ec3a8f25308945aac8c02b. I'm assuming that code includes this fix.