Other SMS300/8X300/8X305 uses?

[Eric Smith]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 10:05 PM, Tony Duell <ard.p850ug1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> My guess is that EPROMs of that time were not fast enough for the 8X305 to
> run
> flat out. Bipolar PROMs were too expensive in the capacity needed. So
> they copied the code into (fast enough) SRAM at startup.
>

AFAIK, at the time the IRMA II was made, 2K*8 fast(ish) bipolar PROMs were
not much different in price from the 2K*8 static RAMs they used. I think
the purpose most likely was to allow choice of different firmware at
runtime, either for different feature sets, or for diagnostics.