30 Jan
2009
30 Jan
'09
1:09 p.m.
--- On Fri, 1/30/09, Philip Pemberton <classiccmp at philpem.me.uk> wrote:
One thing that's sometimes worth a quick demo is
the
propensity of EPROMs to temporarily lose their programming
when nailed with high-intensity light from, say, a camera
flash.
<snip>
Anyway, I finished hooking the board up, and figured
it'd be nice to have a photo of the whole arrangement.
The camera flash fired and the software promptly crashed.
That's interesting! Did the thing work after being restarted, or was the data
permanently altered? It doesn't take much to disrupt running software, after all.
I remember one article that described an incredibly creative, low cost digital camera-like
device. Instead of a CCD, the thing used an ordinary DRAM chip with the cover pried off.
The light would affect the cells of the DRAM, and then the 'image' could be read
by the computer. Of course, the thing was incredibly primitive - the pictures weren't
great, but it was an ingenous hack, and a clever utilization of the light-sensitive nature
of these things.
-Ian