^ this, in a professional setup damage to a chip like that would be automatic binning & replacing of the chip/module anyway as there would be no knowing what other damage was done or if the device would continue working reliably, be it ESD or lightning or unicorn farts.Maybe this explanation helps.
Mask ROM is literally a bunch of wires and transistors. It's baked into the chip itself and it's not made out of NAND flash or similar technologies that can lose data or corrupt under normal circumstances. It's wires and transistors. There is literally no way it will corrupt/break on it's own unless there was a manufacturing defect in the first place and that's covered by testing in factory.
The chance of the mask ROM breaking in any way is exactly as high as damage in any other part of the chip including the CPU. And if that happens it's not unlikely it will result in a chain reaction that destroys the entire chip because shorting transistors can destroy other transistors ect. So you should rather worry about the whole chip. Not parts of it. Recovery doesn't matter when the entire chip failed.
You won't find any other SBC that works different.
And if OP thinks a £14 module is "expensive" to replace after a lightning strike he could go price up lightning protection devices and see how well that is likely to save your board after a nearby strike. If you're building devices that need to survive that sort of surge £14 is small beans.
Statistics: Posted by John_U — Tue Dec 03, 2024 3:55 pm