A Disposable Dumper For ROM Chips With A Pi Pico

ROM dumping is critical for preserving old components, and we have noticed several hacks committed to permitting an individual dump a ROM and send its contents to some hacker trapped with a piece of engineering that lost its firmware. Having said that, that demands ROM dumping tools of some variety, and it is normally that the fortunate ROM-outfitted hacker does not very own these equipment. Now, you could mail the chip to an individual else, but postal companies in a lot of nations are identified to be UDP-like — lossy and devoid of shipping assures. The possibility of leaving both equally hackers with no a ROM chip is quite true, so, rather of mailing ROM chips or pricey equipment all around, [Amen] proposes a low-priced and disposable flash dumping device that you could mail alternatively.

The ROMs in query are 24-pin 2332 and 2364 chips, which operate at 5 V and can very easily be study with any microcontroller. Hence, his thought is a extremely simple board, with a Pi Pico and flash chip socket on it, as effectively as some resistors. These are employed to give rudimentary GPIO around-voltage safety, since the RP2040 operates its GPIOs at 3.3 V. All the magic is in the computer software – the device can both equally compose the chip contents in the RP2040’s inner memory, as very well as dump it about USB to the computer. Everything is open-source – if you at any time have to have to dump a uncommon chip on the other aspect of the planet, modify the style to your liking, buy a couple copies and then mail them to the hacker included – shedding this kind of a offer is way a lot less substantial than dropping a ROM chip with past-of-its-variety firmware on it.

Old ROM chips are dying out, leading to complete generations of hardware, like synths, to fade away – with instruments like this 1, you can lend a hand in preserving the legacy of many an marketplace and pastime, and numerous hackers do. Seeking to discover about the principles of parallel flash dumping? This publish from 2012 will be a fantastic begin, and then verify out a a lot more new undertaking to study how factors are completed with far more recent sections.