Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 23:01 +0000, Tim Green wrote:
When I last worked with EPROMs (late 90s) the UV box always contained a few extra blanks, so there'd always be some ready. They couldn't be damaged by too much UV, could they?
Do you know I always thought they could...and that was why you had the little clockwork timer on most erasers...but maybe that was only there to make sure you didn't "undercook" them.
I always thought they could too, but I'm not sure if this is something I was told or just guessed based on the timer.
I did always have a few blanks around, although I seem to recall most of mine were "second hand" anyway and write failures were not uncommon. I also had a tendency to hoard old versions of code in their EPROMs until I was sure the new code was better, thus finding that most of my spares were not available for use.
<div class=nostalgia> I did my O Level Computing course project based on a Z80 assembler application programmed into EPROM for testing on a home assembled board. I got a good grade purely (I am sure) because none of the teachers had the faintest idea what I was doing! Everyone else used the latest and greatest BBC micros programmed in BASIC, although there was an RM 380Z sat in the corner which nobody understood (for a start it had to be "booted", which sounded scary enough in itself!) </div>
Of-course I'm nowhere near old enough to have proper nostalgia. That will have been mid-80s.