Soldering ROM

2 points by rhoyerboat 5y ago ↗ HN

Anyone ever added an additional ROM chip to their motherboard that would be enabled/disabled via a jumper, switch or twisted wires?

Asking for many friends that I haven't met yet.

Seems like as hardware consumers we should be able to circumvent the SPF of a single soldered on firmware bootloader.

Sheesh- seems easy enough to engineer easily removable bootstrap hardware solutions ..

1 comment

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simonblack 5y ago ↗

This was very common back in the 1980s. Though for extra versatility, it was accomplished more often than not via software, which could enable or disable the PROM at will.

Another thing that was common way back when was to have the ROM/PROM/EEPROM socketed, so it was just a matter of lifting one out and then inserting another.