[Coco] HITACHI HD63C09EP

[gene heskett]

On Thursday, August 04, 2011 04:42:16 PM Steven Hirsch did opine:

> On Thu, 4 Aug 2011, gene heskett wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I thought the "official" Commodore ROMs were masked parts.  Sounds like
> yours were EPROMs without a window for the leading "E".
 
All of the 3.1 kits were in 27C400's that I ever saw.  Previous 1.3/2.0 
kits were masked roms & ran much hotter.

> I had to build an adapter board for my Andromeda programmer to handle
> 16-bit parts.  Can't say enough good things about this product.
> Inexpensive, well supported and you can buy bare-boards for the (usually
> pricey) personality adapters and fab them yourself.  I originally bought
> it to handle bipolar PROMS.  Price out a commercial unit that handles
> those sometime if you want sticker-shock!

The xeltek at the time I bought it with station $, was about $1500.  The GM 
had sticker shock.  I turned to the tv in his office and pointed out the 
lop sided border around an effects insert in a commercial & said "this is 
how I will fix that".  I got the PO and fixed it.
 
> And, yes, I know about the need for double-burning :-) Been there, got
> the T-shirt.

:-)  I wondered how many others, who didn't have a burner, handled that, 
there had to be thousands who got burnt.  About 20 of them came my way at 
the time.  But about that time frame, LightWave got ported to windows, and 
that was the bell that slowly but deafeningly tolled for the amiga lip-lock 
on fancy gfx.  The rest of course is history as Dave Haney documented the 
death throes of it in his videos of the day.  The two top owners took the 
bank account to Burmuda and had a party, until the ran out of $$.  No clue 
where those two are now, but at one point, Anthony and Luigi had a contract 
on those two jerks.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> There a few vendors on eBay that have brand-new ones from time to time.
> But, I hear your point.  The last used ones I bought had a 20-30%
> fallout rate.  Beggars can't be choosers, since as you point out they
> are close to pure unobtanium.
> 
> Steve

And this seems to be the first break in nearly 2 decades.  It is worth the 
gamble IMO.  I haven't trolled ebay looking for them in prolly 15 years, so 
if any went by, they did it w/o my knowledge.

Cheers, gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If a guru falls in the forest with no one to hear him, was he really a
guru at all?
		-- Strange de Jim, "The Metasexuals"