Dumping old ROMs

I usually read out roms with my USD50 MiniPro ROM reader. It is cheap, easy to use and support the most common ROMs. For Linux there is a project on Github vdudouyt/minipro that supports MiniPro from the command line There is a Windows client on the CD that comes with package.

Now, the older the system you want to dump is the more likely it is the MiniPro is not compatible. Instead of buying an expensive ROM reader I have chosen to try my luck with different kind of adapters where one simple solder cables and bend pins on intermediate sockets in order to get the ROM signals to look like a ROM known by MiniPro.

One of the first adapters I made was after some info on the Retrotechnology.com site that I found here. Afterwards I told Herb Johnson who run the site about my success reading a couple of Harris 7641 bipolar 512x8 bit roms and he was very happy and published what I have done. It was a very simple adapter though:

A very simple Harris 7641 adapter

The next adapter project was a bit too ambitious maybe, I wanted to read out two 82S100 ROMs that actually was not used for software but to save real estate and replace discrete logic on a Commodore PC20ii motherboard. It took a long time.

82S100 adapter top side

82S100 adapter bottom side

The 82S100 adapter was soldered and planned for days and weeks given the few hours I get in the garage for a few seconds of fame!

  So for the next adapter project I had much less time and came up with an idea. What if I just solder dangling breadboard cables to a socket and then placed them in the right place directly in the ROM reader? Then I could change the configuration for new roms as needed. The result took less then an hour to solder and with some electrical tape to keep them in place until closing the zero force socket on the ROM reader I successfully read a 82S123 device, a dangling 32 bytes!

Success!!

So this worked for me, make sure you know what you are doing before trying this at home!