Panasonic HHC ROM 'capules'

[brouhaha]

(01-08-2023 05:39 PM)Paul Berger (Canada) Wrote:  The Snapforth was very definitely released as a capsule I have one along with the Snap BASIC

Interesting! A friend worked for Cyber Diagnostics Inc. in the Denver area in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They made pulmonary function testing equipment, such as lung capacity measurement devices, and were developing some product(s) using the HHC. They were only able to get SnapFORTH in box form, and the cross-development software for the Apple II, which unfortunately no one saved. Maybe the SnapFORTH and SnapBASIC capsules came later.

It would be interesting to see the IC markings, but the capsules I've seen have an opaque label over the top of the chip.

It's possible that there may have been a masked ROM vendor that offered a 16KiB 24-pin chip, though I never heard of it back in the day. Probably it wouldn't have been terribly expensive to have a masked ROM vendor do a custom bonded 24-pin part.