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

Heathkid heathkid at heathkid.com
Sat Oct 23 20:30:17 UTC 2010


Backup images are fine... but has anyone considered or tried to contact the 
original programmers to get the actual code used?  I'm sure there wouldn't 
be any reason someone would still consider 30+ year old code a "trade 
secret" and if one had the original code... could reasonably replicate an 
old programmed chip with a newer one.  Just a thought.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Sims" <holrum at hotmail.com>
To: <time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 11:19 AM
Subject: [time-nuts] Maintaining boatanchors (was Capacitor Failures)



I make backup images of all my EPROMs and even bipolar devices. I even built 
a device for reverse engineering secured PALs. I have a fully configured 
Data I/O Unisite for programming. This machine with all the device adapters, 
etc cost somebody well over $100,000

The Unisite is probably the most capable, robust, and expensive programmer 
ever built (and quite a boat anchor, itself). It's a real shame they stopped 
adding new devices last year. The 2900 and 3900's are smaller but don't do a 
few parts (mostly odd bipolar proms). External interface is a standard RS232 
terminal. They do boot off of floppies (720kbfor the Unisite, 1.44Mb for the 
others). There are also units with internal hard drives. The floppy images 
can be burned from a CD (all my computers still have floppy drives, some 5 
1/4", one has 8 inch). The last software release spans 9 diskettes.

I have accumulated a few spare machines when I bought some units just to get 
some oddball package adapter that I did not have. Email me if interested...



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