"Digital Archaeology of the Microcomputer, 1974-1994

William Donzelli wrote: Of course they will. But I suspect that there comes a point when you just can't practically figure out the function of some unknown chip for every possible state and input condition in order to emulate it - at least not in reasonable timescales and at reasonable expense. Think of trying now to reverse-engineer something like a 68000 CPU given just a faulty example of the chip and no supporting documentation whatsoever. I don't think that problem will get any harder or easier over the years; the tools readily available will track the advances in hardware fairly closely. But the point is that reverse-engineering a "complex" undocumented chip (from any era) is a difficult task at best, and I think it always will be. We're just fortunate at the moment in that *generally speaking* for "our" vintage equipment there's often documentation available, and any given chip found a home in lots of different systems, so there's a better chance of finding a straight replacement. cheers Jules