Martin_Head wrote: Sat Jun 28, 2025 4:07 pm
If you have some very small side cutters, you can (with the power off) snip off the legs of those IC's next to the body of the chip to remove it. This will also make the later removing the legs easier.
This method is for very skilled techs, if you don't instruct him properly he could cut tracks off, blow them up, scratch the PCB...
If you have the ability to write an EPROM, a spare 28 pin chip socket, 74LS04 chip and you have basic soldering skills you could make one of my "dead test" diagnostic ROMs as described here: viewtopic.php?t=5305 and replace the system ROMs.
*IF* the ZX8301 and ZX8302 and CPU aren't terminally damaged it should show you what's working. It doesn't need any working RAM to do the initial memory test and show that there's some life in the machine.
