[Jason P], evidently an enjoyer of previous reliable laser printing tech, spilled a drink (nitter) on to his Panasonic KX-P5400 SideWriter. After cleanup, all the things labored high-quality — except that the PSU’s 5 V turned 6.5 V all through the accident, and the EEPROM with LocalTalk interface firmware died, relationship in between VCC and GND seemingly interrupted within the chip. Understandably, [Jason] went on Twitter, admitted the mistake of his techniques, and sheepishly asked all around for EEPROM dumps.
In its place, [Manawyrm] wondered — would the chip have anti-ESD system diodes from GND to IO pins, by any possibility? A diode manner multimeter look at confirmed, indeed! It was time for an outlandish try to get well the firmware. [Manawyrm] proposed that [Jason] hook up all output pins but one particular to 5 V, powering the EEPROM by means of the interior VCC-related system diodes – looking at the flash a single little bit at a time and then, combining eight dumps into a one graphic.
Right after preparing a TL866 set up, a person hour of perform and some PHP scripting later on, the procedure was a achievement. Evidently, in particular sorts of instances, dead EEPROMs might even now tell their tales! It is not very clear what transpired in this article. The bond wires appeared fantastic, so who is aware of where by the link acquired interrupted – but we just can’t deny the success of the recovery procedure! Need a primer on dumping EEPROMs that are not useless? In this article you go.
This is a interesting trick to get well info from a broken/faulty EEPROM soon after an overvoltage or reverse-energy celebration:
Misuse the internal ESD safety diodes to feed the chip with voltage through the info pins. Then consider multiple dumps with different bits remaining run. https://t.co/WHUiiaJdgf
— Manawyrm (@Manawyrm) August 26, 2022
We thank [Chaos] for sharing this with us!