The Retro Chip Tester (RCT) was developed to test „old“ memory chips from the 1970s and 1980s, which are often no longer recognized by today’s programming devices.
The RCT is able to identify defective memory cells very reliably. It can save the contents of ROMs, PROMs and EPROMs to a memory card. If the memory chip is known, the name is shown directly on the display. A database with 300,000 entries is available for this purpose. (containing Arcade, computers and pinball image checksums)
Adapters can be built to test weirder ICs or even program obsolete EPROMS (such as 2708 – n.b. it can read them anyway, you only need the adapter to program them!)
I needed to program some 2708’s and you can never have too much test equipment, so I bought a PCB set from the UK distributor here, a PCB for the 2708 programmer from JLCPCB and the parts I didn’t already have from Digikey, a few hours soldering and we have a working tester. (so I can finally test all of those old ram chips I have in the spares box)