16K-bit UV EPROM

Link to the It's Pronounced "EPROM" T-shirt and other stuff:
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#ComponentsCloseUp Number 259
Manufacturer: Eurotechnique
Part Number: ET2716Q-1
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The “E” logo on the part is for Eurotechinque, a company “founded in 1979 in Rousset, Bouches-du-Rhône as a joint-venture between Saint-Gobain of France and US-based National Semiconductor” - from the Wikipedia page on STMicroelectronics.
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This part is a 16K-bit (16,384) EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) device that is able to be erased with UV light. The EPROM can be programmed electrically and erased multiple times, allowing for one device to be used for testing code before deploying it onto chips that can’t be erased, like PROMs.
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To erase the contents stored on the EPROM, an ultraviolet source of 2537Å can be used with the window exposed. This will erase the chip completely within about 15-20 minutes, according to the datasheet. If the window is not covered, the contents can slowly be corrupted and erased, due to UV light from the sun or other sources. This will usually take days or weeks to complete.
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This chip is interesting because something had caught my eye in one of the corners when I was looking at it under the microscope. To me it looks like it could possibly be a butterfly, or perhaps a pair of scissors. rareLEDs over on Instagram had opened up a different EPROM, the the NM27C32G from National Semiconductor, which put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
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On the NM27C32G is a silicon doodle of a wrist with a hand. One of the fingers has a bow tied on it, and there is a watch on the wrist with what looks like a national semi logo. Since Eurotechinque has some ties to National Semiconductor, it makes sense that they would share designs. This design probably used portions of the NM27C32G, but the other parts of the doodle were on different layers, or removed from this design entirely.

[ianmiles]

My guess: Tying a piece of string on your finger was once a way of remembering things, so here it symbolises memory. The invisible hand symbolises erasable memory perhaps?

[ChessIsJustAGame]

PROM ---> EPROM
Erasable Programable Read Only Memory.
EEPROM (Electrically Erasable) became the Flash Erasable EPROM (FLASH) because erasing took too long as bit by bit erasing. My career started in 1980 at Texas Instruments in the MOS Memory division based then in Houston, TX.

[shuggiemcg]

it simply amazes me how humankind can actually make things like this, we take them for granted in our everyday life, but they are works of marvels

[michaelmcfeely]

The 2716 stores 16384 bits of memory. These bits are arranged as 8-bit words, or sometimes called a byte. This produces 2048 bytes of memory. I used the 2716, 2732, 2764 and 27128 on Intel single board computers that used the 8085A. Yes, I am old.

[turkeyboyjh]

These were used in my early fuel injection systems which made tuning interesting, we used to set them out in the sun to erase them

[edw.]

I remember these from when I was a kid in the 70s. My stepdad was an Electrical Engineer. He made circuit boards for the Sol-20. He also had a small plastic box with a UV light that plugged into the wall to erase them.

[googleuser]

I used to "burn" eproms back in the day. Built my own programmer. Thanks for the memories.

[lohikarhu]

There is, or was, a little 'caricature' on the LP5523 die, to commemorate my part in the design; i specified, and co-designed, the device for "the customer"
BTW, if you ever need an LED driver that lets your CPU "sleep" a lot, the LP5521 and LP5523 have small programmable processors, plus linear/log conversion, temperature compensation, automatic 1.5x charge pump, I2C, interrupt, a "GPIO pin"...

[jessebob]

I love hearing about engineers putting Easter eggs on chips. It's kinda funny to me.

[SensiProductionzBlindDogVideos]

Y’all are geniuses. No joke. Omg this stuff blows my mind, and the comment section too especially

[rbmwiv]

I used those back in the day of chip tuning. Basically anything up to 1995 can be upgraded with a chip so I used these along with a dyno that way I could erase and program a new map on the chip. The maps that actually made power I burned them on one time use EPROM and sold them and made good money doing that. Now everything is programmed directly to the engine control module.

[gnormhurst]

I used a lot of 2716s when working with RCA 1802 microprocessors in the 1980s. They were like the floppy disk of microprocessor systems -- portable and non-volatile.

[markstipulkoski]

Back in the 80's I had written assembly language code used in a telephone switch in Argentina. The code was stored on these and I had to fly them down when we upgraded the program. Unfortunately, the first thing I did when I got down there is to accidentally erase the new master. It was before the internet so my coworker in the US had to call out the 2000 hexadecimal values via an international call that went on for several hours. We did amazing things in just a few kilobytes of memory and programming in assembly language.

[DanielHuet-Vaughn]

builders have a good sense of humor...i found a leprechaun pendant hidden but a builders renovation in the 60's of a 100 year old house...and a safety pin that was holding the house up left by the original builder dead center under wall plate of what was once the front wall of the house.

[MoHakakian]

Wow, it's hard to believe how much time has passed since I last worked with EPROM and EEPROM. Feels like a lifetime ago!

[dorion]

I remember programming those manually with a BIOS programmer or EPROM back in the days to get a 486x cpu to go faster than advertised...

[chrisguli]

Before the E in EPROM was available we had PROMs in which the fusible links were actually burned or fuses blown. It would be interesting to see the blown vs the unblown fuses in one of these classic devices.

[senoleker]

Thank you for reminding me of the old times. To burn these, I designed a programmer for the SINCLAIR SPECTRUM and wrote assembly code at the beginning of the '80s.

[Kilonovae]

i think its just super neat that they give you a little window to look at the tech

[daoutbox]

It''s cool to check out the chip structures
But also to see these chip tested to see how well time has been kind.