Does anybody out there have experience with FPGAs? I'm part of a club that restores old synthesizers (musical instruments) for our own collections. Replacing obsolete IC's is always our greatest challenge. You guys have been the BEST at helping me with earlier issues, so I'm reaching out again with what I think may be the most challenging project I've embarked on. The past couple years, we've seen an increasing number of these old synths die because one of the custom gate arrays has gone bad, but oddly enough, there's this guy in Poland who always seems to have a replacement in stock at 10 times what they're worth......followed by VAT, customs, shipping costs and months before the chip arrives. Thing is, where's he getting them? For the most part, when we need to replace one of these custom IC's, we scour the internet for somebody parting out a unit. As the years click by, this resource is becoming more and more difficult and we find ourselves going to him. So here's my question. Can old technology gate arrays be read and duplicated in a FPLA like EPROMS? Or....is there a solution to this and I'm asking the wrong question? For the sake of discussion, the custom gate array we're currently working with is a Hitachi HG61H25 (HG61H25B18F). I have attached the original data sheet. We have a good original chip that could be read. I'm not concerned with reverse engineering. Would just like to figure out a way read a good IC so we could replace dead ICs with a functional equivalent. I don't think I'm ready for a step-by-step procedure, but rather, maybe a short overview if/how this can be done, what equipment/software would be required and maybe identify a modern FPGA that we could use for discussion. Thanks, everyone. Jim
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