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A92: TI-ROM




Shawn,

you said before that you would do as much as possible for people to not 
mess with the TIs actual ROM.  couldn't you just partition a specific 
part of FLASH chip to have just ROM, not eraseable not programmable?

how about this notion:

let's say you have 19 pins to the FLASH chip to find the spot in memory 
to erase/program (that's .5MB or 512K) and you have the location below 
8K (all hypothetical, you can change the values or play around with the 
notion).  below 8K would mean that the first 6 pins would be 0 and the 
other 13 is the 8K selection (the ROM).  now, let's say that you don't 
want people to mess with this ROM except the TI company when upgrading, 
well add an extra pin to the FLASH chip, and if this pin is in the on 
position then the calculator will "know" that it's the ti company 
messing with the ROM part and not some "hacker."  in order to get this 
pin in the on position hook it up to another chip (or have it installed 
alongside the FLASH chip in 1 package), this chip can be accessed by the 
port (or however you want to do it), if the chip registers the correct 
"code" it will turn the pin to the FLASH chip on, and the chip can be 
changed.  of course you could place some sort of timer inside the added 
chip, so that the ti company could just set it up to receive for let's 
say 100 cycles and after that it turns the pin off.  with the pin off 
the ROM won't be deleted, on a MOV statement or anything that could 
delete the ROM it won't cause errors, but it just won't work (it's like 
a safety on a gun, you can pull the trigger, but it won't do anything 
unless the safety is off).

just a thought from an 18 year old.

-Rob

p.s.  i hope i didn't spell your name wrong.

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