[time-nuts] Maintaining boatanchors (was Capacitor Failures)

[Magnus Danielson]

Hi Chuck,

On 10/23/2010 03:01 PM, Chuck Harris wrote:
> Hi Magnus,
>
> I keep an old Toshiba 1963 486 based laptop in good working condition
> to allow me to run my old ADVIN U84 DOS based programmer. I check it
> out from time-to-time.
>
> I can't do much about the mask rom'd parts, though I don't think they
> have any higher of a failure rate than any other IC. The eprom based
> controllers, can be a worry, but I can program most of them from the
> 1980's on... assuming they aren't protected.

Some of the ROMed variants can actually be read just like their EPROM 
variants.

While ROMed parts does not have the EPROM trapped charge aspect to 
failure mode, they can fail for any other reason and this is an issue.

> There are a myriad of open source format converters available... things
> that convert S to intel hex, etc... I seem to recall even writing some
> of them...but that is a foggy memory by now.

Yes.

> I find my violins' EPROMS are very stable, and last centuries.

They don't have any, which helps.

Cheers,
Magnus