yah, REXCPM tested clean in the socket,  so I should go and look at the
code and see if there is some way the socket could be bad and it still
tests ok.



On Wed, Oct 21, 2020 at 1:06 PM Brian White <[email protected]> wrote:

> 27C256 would be right but you won't be able to use it without a pinout
> adapter. Not just the physical carrier to fit the chip in the socket, the
> pins are moved around in the M100 socket.
>
> I would look carefully at the contact between all the pins inside the
> socket and the rexcpm board. It's easy for a leg to fail to make contact.
>
> There isn't really a *cheap* or fast way to make your own option rom. The
> pinout adapter and the physical socket connection makes it complicated.
>
> You could make yourself a http://tandy.wiki/Teeprom. It's easy to do and
> all the parts are things you can buy new today, no hunting for old
> no-longer-made stuff on ebay.
>
> But it's kind of silly what that all adds up to, ordering a 3d printed
> part, and the eeprom is a ridiculous $9 for a single 32K chip, and you need
> to get a soic test clip which is $30 itself let alone a programmer. And
> it's not fast waiting for everything to ship. Especially if you don't pay
> extra for rush service for the pcb and the carrier. For quick n dirty
> testing you could skip the carrier and just glue some cardboard and a
> ribbon to the bottom, but you're waiting for everything else anyway.
>
> I might possibly be able to make an updated version of that which uses a
> $1 flash part instead of a real eeprom, and staggered rows of pin holes
> instead of a $30 test clip to make a programmer connection, but not today.
>
> So, asking to borrow one is reasonable. I can lend you something. I'll
> email off list.
>
> Meantime really double check the pin contacts between the rex and the
> socket. See if any of the pins in the socket look compressed.
>
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 11:55 AM Steve Glenner <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello
>>
>> I’m looking to borrow or buy cheaply any M100 option rom to verify my
>> M100 works with option rooms.
>>
>> I’m trying to get a new REXCPM working on my M100, and running into an
>> issue where the software will not run after initializing and loading the
>> REXCPM software onto it.
>> Basically the initialization program seems to complete without errors,
>> initializing the directory and transferring the RXC_11_b39 firmware from a
>> disk emulator, but then when I enter “CALL 63012” the M100 sort of hangs
>> and various areas of the screen get all black pixels, like the block
>> character is sent for a few repeats on random parts of the screen, but it
>> never results in a working Rex. Resetting goes back to the basic menu but
>> no rexmgr shows up.
>>
>> I’ve worked with Stephen Adolph a bit on this, he’s sent me a test
>> program to test all the memory on the REXCPM which seems to succeed, so I
>> next want to verify that the M100 option rom circuitry is working under
>> normal conditions. I don’t need any specific rom, and I don’t even need to
>> keep it very long if you want it back.
>>
>> Alternately, I have several microcontrollers and even an old pic-kit
>> programmer so maybe I could burn a conventional option rom image to a
>> physical EEPROM (I guess a 27C256?)
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Steve
>>
>>

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