What I do is to remove the EPROMS, take images of them to disk and then re-burn them. If they aren't socketed, I add turned pin sockets after removing them.
The ones that worry me aren't so much the EPROMS, but the programmable MCUs with on board memory that are no longer available, and are one time burn parts and are also no longer obtainable. I also worry about the later generation stuff that has a "security bit" that means you cannot actually read them. Cheers, David Partridge -----Original Message----- From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On Behalf Of k6...@comcast.net Sent: 22 October 2010 23:08 To: time-nuts@febo.com Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Maintaining boatanchors (was Capacitor Failures) I've got a lot of old(er) HP and Tek test gear. Built to last, the manuals include schematics and theory of ops, and they still perform. It's not the old electrolytics that scare me -- it's the old EPROMs. All those wonderful micro-based instruments with their extensive self-test on startup routines -- sooner or later enough of that trapped charge will leak out, and bits will start flipping... What to do? Pop out the parts and rewrite them? Dump them to disk as well? bob k6rtm _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
