A Breakthrough in Busch 2090 Microtronic Preservation - We Retrieved the Firmware ROM!

Thanks to Jason and "decle", we have now successfully dumped the Microtronic firmware ROM from its mask-programmed TMS 1600 microcontroller, using the "test mode"! This is a big breakthrough in Microtronic preservation / archaeology, as the firmware was previously lost to history. Unfortunately, the original sources and the HEX files weren't archived. For the first time in history, 43 years after it's creation, we can now disassemble and reverse engineer the original Microtronic firmware! This will enable Microtronic re-implementations running the original firmware, unlike the previous emulators (e.g., https://github.com/lambdamikel/Busch-...) that were fresh C-based re-implementations, but didn't use the original firmware.

I am going to make a Hackaday project page with more details later, but this is basically an adaptation of the process described for the Science Fair Microcomputer Trainer here:

https://hackaday.io/project/194876-ex...