Classic Chip Emulators

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ptdecker
 
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Joined: Fri Dec 17, 2010 2:33 pm

Classic Chip Emulators

Post by ptdecker »

Many of us hobby and educator types love the old 7400 family TTL chips (CMOS too). But, obviously they are becoming more rare all the time. And, chips like the classic 74181 are very hard to find. It seems to me that the raw price for microcontrollers and perhaps even small FPGAs is getting low enough that mass produced "emulators" could be produced. I'm envisioning a line of chips that come in the traditional 8, 14, 16, 20, 24, etc., DIP pin configurations, can be bought by the dozens, and then programmed through some programming mode to take on the functions of any of the old chips including the proper pin configuration emulating the original. Then one has a toolbox of drop-in replacements for any chip. Need a triple three-input NAND gate (74x10)? No problem! Grab a 14-pin emulator chip, zap it with your programmer as a 7410, and then use as a direct replacement in your circuit.

Any one doing anything like this? Is this feasible?

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