First post, by lowlytech
I have two of the aztecmonster SCSI to CF interfaces I purchased in 2015 for use in older macintosh computers. Long story short, I only used one and left the other in the static bag til last week when I finally got my hands on a Mac SE. Opened it up to use the 2nd adapter and the computer would not see the interface. Disconnected the SCSI cable, hooked it back and it was there, then it was gone again after the next reboot. Very inconsistent behavior. Since I had two adapters I could do some general troubleshooting and found out that the problem followed the adapter, and nailed it down to the BIOS flash chip itself. I could pull the winbond chip from the bad adapter and put it in the mac that has been working flawless for 3 years and it now would give me the blinking disk symbol, and the new adapter that wouldn't work consistently booted every single time. So this makes me feel pretty confident that the flash chip is bad or corrupt.
I have contacted the company I bought these from, but so far the exchange hasn't been encouraging that they even care, stating that this product is discontinued and thus no support. Since I have one working unit and one bad, can I buy a EEPROM programmer and read the good chip to a file and then write that to a new flash chip? Is it possible they have a read lock or something that would prevent this? I am unfamiliar with flashing chips other than through a DOS utility, so forgive me.
Better yet if someone wanted to charge a small amount to copy this for me so I don't have to purchase a programmer I would prefer that.
Thanks for your help with this