[sdiy] EPROM has gone defected ?

[Neil Johnson]

Hi,

> So the quality depends on a lot of things, today such failure
> is certainly seldom, but in the past I am not so sure.

Excellent points.  About the first thing I do with any old synth with
EPROMs in it is to carefully remove them and copy them.  Everything else
about the synth can be recreated in harware, but if/when the EPROMs go
dead, that's it.

Sure, read specs of today's EPROMs and they will talk about 20+ year
retention time, but go back to,say, mid-80s and things look rather
different.  Heck, mid-80's _IS_ 20 years ago!!!

It is possible that even re-burning them with the exact-same binary file
could rejuvenate an old EPROM that has got a little forgetful in its old
age.

Cheers,
Neil

-- Neil Johnson :: Computer Laboratory :: University of Cambridge ::
http://www.njohnson.co.uk          http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~nej22
----  IEE Cambridge Branch: http://www.iee-cambridge.org.uk  ----