Gregory's Servertoday's mystery chip: the EM256SC8, made by Eagle. what is it?
 8 comments
 I'm a software person so I might be entirely wrong, but how could this be a RAM chip with just 16 pins? If it's 256 kbit like others are saying, you'd need 15 address lines, 8 data lines, power, ground, chip select, and read/write signals. So at least 27 pins. Unless it uses some kind of serial protocol, but is that even a thing with RAM chips?  @grishka @tubetime Well no, DRAM is based on pages. You first select one of the 512 pages, then you can access any of the bits in that page. The pins for that are mulitplexed, so you need 9 bits for addressing. Obviously it's organized as 256k*1Bit. I have no idea where you get the idea from that it's 32k*8Bit. That would only be useful for computers with word sizes that are a multiple of 8 Bits, or some other number plus parity.  @grishka 1 bit data, 9 address pins time multipexed, couple of controls and power.  @tubetime well, it’s not a dirty word (or, indeed, a dirty bird). Sorry, I always think of that song every time I see the word eagle. I’ll show myself out. |
@tubetime Based purely on the “256” in the name, I would guess it’s some kind of memory.