HP 82929A - Programmable ROM Drawer

HP 82929A Solder Side

HP8229A Component Side

The HP 82929A Programmable ROM Drawer is one of the many accessory modules available for the HP Series 80 personal computers.


The module fits into one of the rear expansion slots and allows you to add your own code resident in PROM or EPROM, or any of the old original ROM modules for which images are available on-line.

After removing the enclosure of the HP 82929A module you will find two 28-pin DIP sockets that can accommodate either two 4KByte (2732) or two 8KByte (2764) EPROMs. Each ROM module image is 8KBytes, then using 2764 EPROMs you can add two additional ROM module images with the HP 82929A module.


Project Description

The primary goal of this project is to reverse engineer an original HP 29829A module and obtain a full set of schematics. Since the module does not require or use any specific custom HP parts only standard (some of the original ICs may be obsolete today and hard to find) CMOS and TTL parts it won't be hard having the schematics to make a clone or equivalent module.


Also having the schematics and a better understanding about how the HP-85 I/O bus works will provide valuable information for another project in the list that is to emulate many expansion modules and interfaces with a microcontroller based board.


This process has been done in the past, but besides some high level description of the PRM-85 developed by Bill Kotaska with support from John Shadbolt as a replacement for the HP 82929A, I didn't find much information available on-line.

John was quick to reply to my request for information, and I owe him a great deal of gratitude for his help and encouragement for this an other projects we discussed via e-mail. I also recently got in touch with Bill, we are already exchanging some information and ideas.

I also need to mention Everett Kaser who while at HP was involved somehow in the HP-85 development and provided additional information. When I was almost done with drawing the complete schematics Everett found and scanned the schematics for an old EPROM board that HP used to run the diagnostics code and for a 3 8-bit Digital Output ports. Both schematics helped to confirm and validate the one I was putting together.


Project Progress


I started putting together the schematics by following the traces using two high resolution pictures of the HP 82929A top and bottom sides posted by Vassilis Prevelakis in 2003 in the ClassicCMP mailing list.

Doing the solder or bottom side was obviously quite easy since you can see all the traces in front of your eyes, but getting the traces on the component or top side was a challenge. While the picture had good resolution some shadows on the ICs pins made it very difficult.

I was almost ready to hang the towel and keep searching for help on the net when John came to the rescue and let me put my hands on an actual and working HP 82929A module.

What I did first was to take high resolution pictures of both sides of the board. The pictures above on the right are a medium resolution version of the actual board. You can find a pair of higher resolution version in the links section below.

Now with the new pictures I sized them and mirrored the bottom side to match the top side. Using Adobe Pothoshop I created different layers for different elements such as pads and vias, top and bottom traces and legend for component IDs.

For the complicated and hidden traces on the component side I recurred to an ohm meter and also the logic that was showing up on the schematic I was putting together.

The following two pictures show the top and bottom sides and the pads, vias and trace layers for each side of the HP 82929A board.

Top side traces

Bottom side traces 

And turning off the layers with both pictures, the result was a complete layout diagram showing all the top and bottom traces for the board as shown below.

HP 92829A PCB Layout

Now with the complete board layout, time and patience was not too difficult to put the complete schematic together. It took me a couple of passes while I moved gates here and there to make the final schematic more easy to read and logically consistent.

As I do for many other projects I used Eagle CAD to enter the schematics and Adobe Acrobat to produce a pdf print out.

Project Status

This project is complete and the full schematics and additional information can be found in the links below.

Project Files and References

• HP 82929A Programmable ROM Drawer Schematics (by Jorge Amodio)
• HP 82929A Component Side High-Res Picture (1900x1500px ~2.4MB)
• HP 82929A Solder Side High-Res Picture (1900x1500px ~2.4MB)
• PRM-85 Module by Bill Kotaska and John Shadbolt
• HP EPROM Diagnostics Module Schematics (courtesy Everett Kaser)
• HP-85 Tripe 8-Bit Parallel Output Port Schematics (courtesy Everett Kaser)
• HP 82929A High Resolution Pictures by Vassilis Prevelakis