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Classic computing fanatic John Graham-Cumming has introduced a traditional piece of apparatus again from the brink: a Dataman S4, a calculator-like machine designed for on-the-go programming of PROM chips.
“The Dataman S4 is a beautiful piece of 90s’ equipment: a PROM programmer and emulator launched in 1992,” Graham-Cumming writes. “I just lately purchased one from a vendor on eBay and wanted to resurrect it. It was in excellent working order however wanted a bit awakening to get it going. Fortunately, Dataman are nonetheless round, nonetheless present on-line help for the S4, and nonetheless promote equipment for it.”
A transportable PROM blower, fortunately free from leaked battery juices, lives once more. (📷: John Graham-Cummings)
The Dataman S4 — which value a whopping £495 at launch (round $650, or $1,300 corrected for inflation) — was designed to supply a transportable answer to “blowing” information onto programmable read-only reminiscence (PROM) chips — single-use solid-state storage units that had been the precursor to trendy flash — and their reusable erasable PROM (EPROM) cousins.
Classic units with authentic batteries in typically succumb to leakage and corrosion, however Graham-Cumming’s instance was fortunately clear — however unresponsive. “Plugging within the charger… nothing occurred,” he explains. “Fortunately, Dataman tells you precisely methods to reset the S4 to kickstart charging. These directions labored nice and shortly the S4 was working.”
Having bought a substitute battery pack direct from Dataman, Graham-Cumming had one other problem: Populating the interior library of PROMs, which had been wiped when each the principle and backup batteries had expired. “To load the library it is advisable to have a PROM with the library on it, put it within the ZIF socket and inform the S4 to repeat it,” he explains.
The programmer wants a programmed ROM, however to program the ROM you want the programmer. (📷: John Graham-Cummings)
“However I did not have a PROM, so I wanted to obtain the library picture and burn it right into a PROM, after which load it into the S4 as above. However how do you burn the PROM with out the PROM-burning-library?”
The reply: Through the use of the machine’s in-built help for 27256-type EPROM chips, coupled with an RS232 connection to a close-by PC to feed it the information to be written. “And so,” Graham-Cumming concludes, “after having modified the batteries and ready a library ROM it is time to load that library into the S4 and it will be totally restored. That is so simple as urgent the LIB button.”
Graham-Cumming’s full write-up, together with transcripts of the serial session with the programmer, can be found on his weblog.
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