[Coco] HITACHI HD63C09EP

[gene heskett]

On Thursday, August 04, 2011 12:29:22 PM Steven Hirsch did opine:

> On Thu, 4 Aug 2011, Mark Marlette wrote:
> > My last bulk purchase of over 200 pieces from Russia, untested, good
> > deal.... :)
> > 
> > Over 50% failure rate.
> > 
> > I see these quantities are not that high.
> 
> Will let you know.  I picked a couple up along with some 27C400 16-bit
> EPROMs (needed for Amiga Kickstart BIOS).  Little ventured, little
> risked

That is a real find, commies lawyers made that chip disappear when it 
became obvious that their OS3.1 sales were being impacted.  I called the 
chip maker and offered to take the first 50k pieces if they would make 
another run, but they weren't interested.

I had to fix every one of the 10 or so 3.1s kit I bought from commie for 
the tv station, every blessed one of them. I had to read them out in my 
programmer at the station, and re-burn the exact same data into the top 
(otherwise empty) half because commie checks the top of the eprom for valid 
data before it will use it, that is where it gets the exec address from.

The idiots they hired to run their programmer put the file in the bottom 
half of the chip in those machines that were setup for a 2 chip kickstart.

Now you know "The rest of the story"  ;-)  Be aware that chip seems to have 
a very limited re-programming cycle life.  I lost 2 of them in that rescue 
procedure.  Some of the later ones they shipped were even OTP's, no erase 
window.  My comments on that stupidity were not sharable or printable.  But 
amazingly, I could still burn the top half and use it.  I had a xeltek (sp) 
programmer, could program anything.

> :-)
> :
> > A lot of chip places will list them and then when you go to procure
> > them...no stock.
> 
> They did have them and the order went through.
> 
> But, yes, past performance is no guarantee of future returns, caveat
> emptor, brush after every meal, etc, etc.

;-)
 
> Steve


Cheers, gene
-- 
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... the flaw that makes perfection perfect.