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PAL chips with no security bit

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Simple and cheap logic reader for PC with USB

keithKeith 07/03/2026 at 03:580 Comments

Some of the early PAL chips had no security bit to blow.

These are the earliest programmable PALs. Because the security fuse feature did not exist yet, these chips can always be read back using a legacy device programmer (assuming the chip isn't broken). They have a standard 32x64 or variant fuse array but no "extra" security fuses at the end of the line. [1, 2, 3, 4]

The Original and A-versions of these chips had no security fuse:

These chips have security fuses:

One of my ex bosses explained why he never bothered with the security fuse. If people are sufficiently determined, they will reverse engineer combinatorial PALs almost instantly, and registered PALs with a bit more effort. If a competitor started selling copies of our product, they'd simply get sued until they stop.

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