Author Topic: EPROM Windowed PIC's  (Read 5847 times)

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Pippy

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EPROM Windowed PIC's
« on: July 21, 2013, 06:48:48 pm »

Found these last night whilst sorting out some old chips so that I could find them again if need be.

 

Online PA0PBZ

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2013, 07:13:32 pm »
They're a beauty, but I don't regret that flash memory won the race. I remember the erase time of eproms (15 minutes?) which totally killed your productivity while debugging.
Keyboard error: Press F1 to continue.
 

Pippy

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2013, 07:16:03 pm »
lol yeah, it was awful having to wait for the erase cycle to complete, took flippin ages to debug the firmware. I just about remember using them.
 

Offline Dataforensics

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #3 on: July 21, 2013, 07:22:11 pm »
Ah what you needed was a dataman strobe eraser, only took around ten seconds. I still have one and its a device I was always a bit scared to use as it could probably blind you in seconds.
Woops, just looked them up and see they are not recommended for microcontrollers.

 

Offline Vernon

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2013, 07:25:15 pm »

Found these last night whilst sorting out some old chips so that I could find them again if need be.

Yes! things of beauty. They belong in a museum :)
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Offline David_AVD

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #5 on: July 21, 2013, 11:10:24 pm »
They're a beauty, but I don't regret that flash memory won the race. I remember the erase time of eproms (15 minutes?) which totally killed your productivity while debugging.

I used to have 3 windowed chips when developing code.  One in the board, another in the eraser and a third one cooling down after being erased.   :D
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #6 on: July 22, 2013, 04:57:54 am »
I've still got several windowed PIC's somewhere. Ah, the memories...
 

Offline free_electron

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #7 on: July 22, 2013, 02:25:39 pm »
What is this ? A bunch of crotchety old men reminiscing about the good old days ?
Sheesh...

In my time i had to walk two hours to get to the internet. In winter even through the snow ! And now ? The click and -wooft- everything is there ...  Mumble mumble...
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Offline daveshah

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #8 on: July 22, 2013, 02:38:06 pm »
I've always wondered if it would be possible to specifically program bits using a very narrow beam laser
 

Offline free_electron

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #9 on: July 22, 2013, 02:44:53 pm »
The laser would erase them... You need an electron beam to charge the gate..
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Offline AlfBaz

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #10 on: July 22, 2013, 03:11:24 pm »
Erasers... You blokes were spoilt, I stuck mine on the window sill for day or two
 

Offline andersm

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #11 on: July 22, 2013, 03:20:26 pm »
The laser would erase them... You need an electron beam to charge the gate..
Those kinds of methods have been used to reset code protection bits in decapped devices.

Offline free_electron

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #12 on: July 22, 2013, 03:59:48 pm »
Jep. That's how it is done. Decap , flash the fuse bit. Dump...
There are specialized companoes that have maps for almost every processor where the bits are.
Its not hard to find. Buy blank chip , set fuse , probe around with an ebeam to see where the charge is. Takes a few hours the first time. Write down coordinates. Next chip takes less than a minute to do.
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Offline nctnico

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #13 on: July 22, 2013, 07:56:43 pm »
Erasers... You blokes were spoilt, I stuck mine on the window sill for day or two
IIRC I also have a windowed PIC somewhere. Many years ago I build a ^Canal+ (pay TV) decoder from a diagram on internet. Because there where several software versions I bought a PIC with a window so I could erase and re-program.
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Offline lapm

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #14 on: July 25, 2013, 06:36:35 am »
They're a beauty, but I don't regret that flash memory won the race. I remember the erase time of eproms (15 minutes?) which totally killed your productivity while debugging.

Thats why you used more then one chip while developing :) Remember developing some code at school, used 4 chips while developing. Erase some, have couple still to test your code.

Thank God we have flash memory now, much much easier and faster.
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Offline ben_r_

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #15 on: July 29, 2013, 09:27:09 pm »
Ha, I still have several of those too. I used to use the Dataman UV eraser too.
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Offline MrAureliusR

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #16 on: August 09, 2013, 01:24:07 pm »
The colour scheme for the PIC's on the right seems to be a popular one for EPROM based devices. I've got a couple old (70s) TI EPROMs that look identical. They still work! I don't have an eraser though - realistically how long does it take sunlight to erase them?
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Offline Niklas

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #17 on: August 10, 2013, 05:35:03 pm »
My boss was contacted a couple of years ago regarding a project he worked on in the 1980s. The machine, a welding robot, had started to do strange things and it turned out to be related to a corrupted EPROM. They had used paper sticker instead of a foil based sticker to cover the window. Sometimes the products live longer than you initially plan for. It turned out that my boss still had copies of the old firmware stored on floppy disks and get the machine back to work again.
 

Citizen

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Re: EPROM Windowed PIC's
« Reply #18 on: August 11, 2013, 01:51:44 am »
Hm...can you glue a UV LED on each EPROM-window  and make a super slow SRAM from it?=)))
 


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