I have 250 2716 eproms. What to do with them?

[mykrowyre]

So I stumbled upon the best yard sale of my life.

I scored a rare Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminal, two Shugart floppy drives, and hundreds of eproms for $50. The terminal needed only minor repairs and sprang to life but the keyboard was fragile and iffy. I also picked up a complete Amiga 1000 system with monitor, floppy, a ton of software, etc, for $300, in original boxes.

The Amiga needed repairs, both CIA's were dead. I love the history of the A1000 but when I got my first Amiga, the 1000 was already old news and had no easy hard drive options. I had many 500's, 1200's and 3000's though.  I repaired and then sold the Amiga, but only at a very slight profit. 

After thinking REALLY deep to decide if I really had the room, courage, and money to build up a real IMSAI computer, I decided to sell most of that stuff off to someone who really wanted it and use an IMSAI simulator .  I sold the terminal, the drives, and all of the purple ceramic eproms with gold pins. 

I made a bunch of money to put back into the hobby and impressed my wife with my electronics picking skills! Truly a once in a lifetime find.

BUT, now I have approximately 250 of the 2716 eproms left. These are either white ceramic, some with gold pins, but mostly just basic ceramic case with plain pins.

I'm building an 8 bit computer from scratch so I can certainly use perhaps um 4 or 5 of these, but to do with 250 of them?

I thought it might be fun to put 32 of them on a board to get 64k of read only memory. I have no idea what I would put in 64k of eprom space.

Or, maybe use 4 or 8 of them together to make cartridges for my 8 bit computer project?

Right now I only need enough for basic which would easily fit in 2k.

Just wondered if anyone had any creative ideas for what i could do with 250 2716's?

[gbaddeley]

Make a work of art and hang it on your wall?

[ebastler]

Make a work of art and hang it on your wall?

How about a display (monochrome LED array) that plays a video loop from frames stored in the EPROMs? One EPROM could hold a 128*128 frame -- although you would probably organize the memory 16 EPROMs wide, to serve a full column in parallel.

Mount all the EPROMs in a nice array, put the LED array above/below/besides it, and install the whole thing in a picture frame. If you leave the EPROM windows uncovered and install it in a bright place, you might see bits starting to flip over time, and can pass it off as a real artwork, which shows the decay of yesteryear's knowledge... 

[dexters_lab]

like the idea of the fading EPROMs, could be fun storing text that slowly corrupts itself on a large scrolling display

[SL4P]

clip, clean, drill, add a key ring
Sell at the local market for $3 to $5 each

[ebastler]

clip, clean, drill, add a key ring
Sell at the local market for $3 to $5 each

Heresy! 

[Stray Electron]

Not a constructive use but those white ceramic packaged chips probably have a decen t amount of gold in them, they could be worth a bit for recycling.

You could also build a computer with them, not using them as program storage but as a bunch of PLDs.

  Any white ceramic IC with gold lid and legs are usually worth a good amount of money on E-greed. I have friends in the E-scrap business and gold pins are worth about $0.01 per pin as scrap. The gold lids have less than $0.05 of gold.

   If I were the OP I'd put a few of them on E-bay and see how they do.  But I'd probably package up most of the ones that are in GOOD condition and wait for the collectability to grow. Package them well and not in that black anti-static foam that needs to disintegrate and that destroys the finish. I wouldn't put them in foam at all but in hard cased anti=static boxes.  The 2716s are old enough that not only collectors are looking for them but also people that are trying to restore old computers, and in some case old TE, and need them for repairs.

[mykrowyre]

Thanks I like the wall/image idea but I think using them for PLDs might be an even better idea.

[David Hess]

2716 Voltron

[jonpaul]

Hello

Am doing the historic reconstruction of a 1976 rare cipher machine, the 2716 EEPROMs store the program of a Motorola 6800, but they have lost the data or are defective

In case you have some of the 2716 extrait, we would greatly appreciate it if you could supply some, perhaps 5-12 pcs.

Will gladly par the post, to a USA adress

Where are you located?

Any photos of the EEPROMs?


Many thanks

With Kind Regards

Jean-Paul
ARCSI

[james_s]

Sell them to people who restore vintage equipment. Lots of late 70s-early 80s arcade games use 2716s, lots of vintage computer stuff. Those white ceramic packages with gold pins are hard to come by.

[Bud]

sellmyretro.com

[RoGeorge]

When the window of a 2716 EPROM is exposed to sunlight, it generates a small voltage.
Connect them in series, and make a 2716 gold solar panel, for rappers.   

[bobcat2000]

Tape the chips pins up on your English teacher's chair Bart Simpson style.

[Ccandrews]

The white ceramic / gold pins may fetch a bit of money depending on condition.  Heck, I would even buy them. But the 2716 was during the 25v programming era and the people interested in such things are dying out. 

My suggestion is to build some hardware around them and share the project for others to build. Maybe an 8008 or 8080 system — help keep an ‘ol 8008 running and not cast into a paper weight.  For example, you could make a 2716 memory card for the  http://sbc-85.com/  system.