2 Nov
2011
2 Nov
'11
7:09 p.m.
On 11/2/2011 4:03 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On the subject of hardware, I'd like to pass along
a link that
details my efforts to clone three PALs--the AT&T 6300 video display
card HAL10L8; the Soundblaster 2.0 upgrade PAL16L8 and the Trantor
T130B SCSI controller ROM address PAL16L8.
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/entry.php?314-Cloning-a-PAL-
HAL-%28Part-1%29
I don't know if I'd stick with SSI TTL for the "brute forcer", but it
worked well enough. I'd probably just use a cheap microcontroller if
I were starting afresh.
This appears to be a valid approach for pure combinatorial PALs and
HALs. Registered devices are a different matter entirely.
--Chuck
Chuck,
Thanks for posting those links. Your work was very fascinating, and
I've often thought about brute-forcing hardware in exactly the same way
(using a uC) to derive those equations.
Glad to see you helped those soundblaster guys out!
I have a piece of amiga silicon (paula, 8364, nmos) which haunts me. I'd
love to extract the floppy DPLL schematic out of chip and then either
recode in HDL or gate-level schematic entry............
Not something similar, or something that works approximately the same
way. The real thing. Yes, I've read the patents. The portion of the chip
I actually want is actually a pretty small area of the die. Most of the
chip is taken up by the four-channels of D->A, serial port, joystick
ports, and so on.
Anyways, I digress.
Fantastic work and thanks for posting it.
Keith