king_grimloc wrote on 2024-06-09, 06:40:

I believe the NNIOS chip would be OK since it clearly states that the copyright shows 1986 to 1990. I just don't want to get myself or anyone else in trouble.

I'm sorry, that's not how copyright works. The date on the chip tells you what time the copyrighted work in the product was created. So Number Nine worked on the software until 1990. Copyright law tells you how long Number Nine (or any successor company) owns the right after the creation of that work. A typical duration of copyright protection is 75 years, so you would need a license by the current copyright holder to upload the image somewhere, and that platform would need a license for every download they allow until 2065, not just unti 1990.

This basically means that all sites that distribute ROM contents are technically violating copyright. From a legal perspective, ROM images are to be treated the same way as software. You can get away if you distribute software where the copyright owner no longer cares about you making software (that's why "abandonware" sites can stay up for a long time), but that doesn't make it legal. In contrast to general purpose software or game ROMs of gaming consoles, the contents of that ROM are basically worthless unless you own the graphics card the ROM is made for, so the actual damage of illegal distribution of the ROM contents is likely found to be way lower in a lawsuit, making it less interesting for companies to sue for illegal distribtion of firmware ROMs than to sue for illegal distribution of software.

Many people nowadays take a photo of the chip (you already did), and put the photo and the image up on archive.org, hoping that the only one who might get in trouble is archive.org, but it won't be tracable who actually uploaded the work to archive.org. Archive.org has enough money to afford good legal defense, as you can see in the current copyright lawsuit about digital book lending. At the moment, distributing via archive.org seems to work fine - be aware though, that I am no lawyer and this is clearly not legal advice to do so.

king_grimloc wrote on 2024-06-09, 06:40:

My question is; is this a chip that needs archived or can I safely remove the label and erase it?

The fact that I couldn't find much, if any information on the video cards that used this EPROM, or Number Nine Computer Corp. for that matter, I don't want this to become lost if someone can still use it.

From a preservation perspective (not thinking about legal stuff), that stuff should definitely be archived somewhere, so if someone finds the matching card with the ROM ripped from it, a replacement ROM can be created from that image.

king_grimloc wrote on 2024-06-09, 06:40:

Hello all, […]
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Hello all,

My first post!

I purchased 10 used EPROMS from Jameco Electronics last month in a grab bag. 5 of them were without labels, but the other 5 had the manufacturer labels still attached. I found one from a company called Number Nine Computer Corp. Number Nine was from Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and created high-end video cards for the business industry. The EPROM in question has a sticker on it labeled "NNIOS Number Nine Computer Corp. All Rights Reserved 1986-90" with part of the label ripped off to show the part number of the EPROM. I have only seen one video of a person talking about a video card that used these EPROMS and I can't seem to find any other information other than the later video cards from the mid '90s. I also found many other, possibly important, EPROMS in the grab bag.

I have the EPROM image, along with several 386/486 BIOS chips and others that may or may not be copyrighted information from. I would be happy to share these images if it is legal to do so. I believe the NNIOS chip would be OK since it clearly states that the copyright shows 1986 to 1990. I just don't want to get myself or anyone else in trouble.

My question is; is this a chip that needs archived or can I safely remove the label and erase it?

The fact that I couldn't find much, if any information on the video cards that used this EPROM, or Number Nine Computer Corp. for that matter, I don't want this to become lost if someone can still use it.

Thank you for reading.

Well, ten 512 kbit ROM dumps are only going to use like 0.7 MB of storage space uncompressed. I'd just take pics of the labels, dump the EPROMS, erase them, and get all the time in the world to decide what to do with the dumps 😀

With the reservation that I don't set the forum rules, there are similar dumps all over the place. I've even uploaded a few myself without getting in trouble with the administration. Then there's the legal aspect and how you want to deal with that of course.

The guys behind The Retro Web might be interested in the dumps.

Also, welcome to the forums 😀

SOP for me is to download the EPROM contents to a file and then wipe for further use (or stick in a "OK for reuse tube"). The file containing the data then gets renamed to "something dot ROM" (where "something" reflects where the device came from or the label on the device) and then "deduped" against other stuff. An EPROM image is tiny, so why not keep it.

mkarcher wrote on 2024-06-09, 08:36:

This basically means that all sites that distribute ROM contents are technically violating copyright. From a legal perspective, ROM images are to be treated the same way as software. You can get away if you distribute software where the copyright owner no longer cares about you making software (that's why "abandonware" sites can stay up for a long time), but that doesn't make it legal. In contrast to general purpose software or game ROMs of gaming consoles, the contents of that ROM are basically worthless unless you own the graphics card the ROM is made for, so the actual damage of illegal distribution of the ROM contents is likely found to be way lower in a lawsuit, making it less interesting for companies to sue for illegal distribtion of firmware ROMs than to sue for illegal distribution of software.

Not a lawyer either, but at least in the US there is a very broad doctrine of fair use. Especially with these video BIOS ROMs the fact that the ROM is needed routinely for repair purposes of a card that contained a perfectly legal copy of the work that has been damaged, and the copyright holder won't sell a copy of the work at any price (making a hard argument for them that the use impacts its market value), seems like a good case. I agree it's complicated and without the legal background it's hard to argue, and well within VOGON's rights to choose to stay out of it per forum policy, but I don't think uploading it should be flatly called "illegal." It's plausible that such a lawsuit could be thrown out entirely.

Agree that BIOS for PC things are not something to worry about as far as saving the contents and a copyright issue
Many video, motherboard, scsi and other PC things have bios available from the source or public mirrors for download and makes them fair use to individuals for use, specially in this country
as long as you are not trying to sell the contents for profit or claim it as your own there is nothing to worry about.
Is not at all the same as saving ROM images from Nintendo or other game cartridges or specialized software roms and making them publicly available even for personal use, as mkarcher said.
fwiw: The rom in picture shows Number Nine which was going broke in 1999, bought by S3 then merged with Diamond who later spun off to VIA which in turn sold the graphics to HTC.
There is no #9 or S3 left to even worry about, consider it abandoned...Am not a lawyer but have discussed this with a lawyer friend many years ago about saving bios images.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2024-06-09, 21:21:

mkarcher wrote on 2024-06-09, 08:36:

This basically means that all sites that distribute ROM contents are technically violating copyright. From a legal perspective, ROM images are to be treated the same way as software. You can get away if you distribute software where the copyright owner no longer cares about you making software (that's why "abandonware" sites can stay up for a long time), but that doesn't make it legal. In contrast to general purpose software or game ROMs of gaming consoles, the contents of that ROM are basically worthless unless you own the graphics card the ROM is made for, so the actual damage of illegal distribution of the ROM contents is likely found to be way lower in a lawsuit, making it less interesting for companies to sue for illegal distribtion of firmware ROMs than to sue for illegal distribution of software.

Not a lawyer either, but at least in the US there is a very broad doctrine of fair use.

Yes, good point. I didn't think of "fair use" when I wrote that paragraph. You are likely correct that the fair use doctrine applies to ROM images used to repair physical hardware. It's more delicate for ROM images that are used in an emulator, though. It seems easy to argue that fixing some hardware you already own is "fair use". It seems more difficult to argue that "fair use" applies if you use the ROM image in a 3rd party emulator, even if we are not talking about Nintendo game ROMs, but "just" about BIOS ROMs for the PC emulation in MAME.

mkarcher wrote on 2024-06-10, 20:58:

jakethompson1 wrote on 2024-06-09, 21:21:

mkarcher wrote on 2024-06-09, 08:36:

This basically means that all sites that distribute ROM contents are technically violating copyright. From a legal perspective, ROM images are to be treated the same way as software. You can get away if you distribute software where the copyright owner no longer cares about you making software (that's why "abandonware" sites can stay up for a long time), but that doesn't make it legal. In contrast to general purpose software or game ROMs of gaming consoles, the contents of that ROM are basically worthless unless you own the graphics card the ROM is made for, so the actual damage of illegal distribution of the ROM contents is likely found to be way lower in a lawsuit, making it less interesting for companies to sue for illegal distribtion of firmware ROMs than to sue for illegal distribution of software.

Not a lawyer either, but at least in the US there is a very broad doctrine of fair use.

Yes, good point. I didn't think of "fair use" when I wrote that paragraph. You are likely correct that the fair use doctrine applies to ROM images used to repair physical hardware. It's more delicate for ROM images that are used in an emulator, though. It seems easy to argue that fixing some hardware you already own is "fair use". It seems more difficult to argue that "fair use" applies if you use the ROM image in a 3rd party emulator, even if we are not talking about Nintendo game ROMs, but "just" about BIOS ROMs for the PC emulation in MAME.

Agreed. If I were the ruler there would be different (longer) copyright terms for artistic works as opposed to those of an instructional or technical nature. There is no reason that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the service manual for a 1937 car are equally deserving of a super-long copyright term.

The Number Nine BIOS might be from a Pepper model (TIGA card). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwTbtVQNkBY

People with the card are going to already have the BIOS, or reach out to someone with both BIOSs to copy them....

You can safely delete what's on them IMO, or make a copy and send them to archive websites.