I won this card in an eBay auction. As you can see it's in great condition, but it's missing an IC, based on what I could gather it's a GAL16V8B-25LP. I saw that you can buy them on eBay for relatively little money. Do they need to be pre-programmed or can I just pop one of them into the card and it will work? Thank you in advance for any advice.
Nop, it will surely need to be programmed before connecting it. What leads to another question... why whould anyone remove a programmed GAL from a working board?
I guess that board is not in "great" condition...
I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...
Just my luck! Is it possible to reprogram an empty chip using a Universal Programmer, provided that someone has the image for the chip?
if we find the gal data then it's very easy to program a replacement
keropi, do you think you'd be able to source something like that? Based on the images the PCB is really clean and it's just missing that one part.
Why take a GAL and leave the memory and GF1 chip? Definitely worth testing.
I was considering to bid on that auction but ultimately decided not to. I do have a rev 3.73 which i was planning to swap the GAL in to try that rev 3.74. Anyway the price went a little too high for me so i didn't bid.
Unless someone cracks the code on that GAL i'm sorry to say that board will be not operational.
I did take a somewhat similar risk last year. I bought a Rev 3.73 from a guy in Australia who claimed the card wasn't working. I got it for 2 AUD + shipping and when the card arrived it wasn't working indeed. Was a matter of shining some good light into the card and with some patience i finally discovered a broken trace:
anyone knows for sure if the gal in question is read-protected or not?
wrote:anyone knows for sure if the gal in question is read-protected or not?
I doubt Advanced Gravis would leave it unprotected...
I also considered buying this card but, when I saw the missing IC, I did some homework and decided it wasn't worth the trouble trying to find another (already) programmed Gravis IC.
I actually asked the seller why the card didn't have the IC chip and this was his response:
"I bought it from a collector, without any removable IC (excluding the big gravis IC).
I put 8 pieces of ram on it, so now it have 1mb. But didnt found the one what is still missing. So it is not working."
Still, I find it quite odd as to why someone would remove the IC from a working card (if it was ever working).
Oh well, guess I'll have to look into for a donor card. I saw one on Amibay but it also has the IC missing.
I just removed the GAL from my 3.73 card, I'll report back tomorrow if it's readable or not... who knows, we might get lucky 🤣
wrote:Oh well, guess I'll have to look into for a donor card. I saw one on Amibay but it also has the IC missing.
I'm afraid your new card was itself a donor card.
I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...
wrote:I just removed the GAL from my 3.73 card, I'll report back tomorrow if it's readable or not... who knows, we might get lucky 🤣
Thank you keropi.
wrote:I'm afraid your new card was itself a donor card.
Well in that case this will go down as one of the dumbest things I've ever done with my money.
Success!
We now have a dump of the 3.73 GAL on U12 , driver detects the card, gus mididemo loads and plays midis fine, cubic player plays mods in GUS mode, duke3d plays sfx+midi from GUS... unless someone has something trickier to test I believe we are set.
The GAL is next to the GF1 IC and it helps with the ISA bus access as far as I can tell, so I doubt 3.73 vs 3.74 makes any difference when it comes to it - unless someone knows more about it and corrects me 😀
I am attaching the JED here as well, maybe it helps someone else too 😎
Evert you can have the GAL copy for the cost of chip+postage, pm me your address so I can tell you about shipping options 😊
Wow this is great news and hopefully there won't be any differences between 3.73 and 3.74. However if there is a difference than all we need is a 3.74 card and dump the GAL.
wrote:Success! We now have a dump of the 3.73 GAL on U12 , driver detects the card, gus mididemo loads and plays midis fine, cubic pla […]
Success!
We now have a dump of the 3.73 GAL on U12 , driver detects the card, gus mididemo loads and plays midis fine, cubic player plays mods in GUS mode, duke3d plays sfx+midi from GUS... unless someone has something trickier to test I believe we are set.
The GAL is next to the GF1 IC and it helps with the ISA bus access as far as I can tell, so I doubt 3.73 vs 3.74 makes any difference when it comes to it - unless someone knows more about it and corrects me 😀I am attaching the JED here as well, maybe it helps someone else too 😎
Evert you can have the GAL copy for the cost of chip+postage, pm me your address so I can tell you about shipping options 😊
Thank you so much! You might have just spared me the shame of being the biggest pill in the history of VOGONS.
Wow, lucky! You're a boss, keropi. 😀
heh, don't feel that way Evert - we all bought the wrong thing at some point 😁
