"destructive read of a ROM"?

[Fred Cisin]

On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, Richard wrote:
> Over on comp.terminals someone wrote this about the VT100:
> 	"The power-on operation does a "destructive" read of the
> 	ROM-based firmware.  After so many power-ups, the ROM becomes
> 	unreadable. This was a design issue at the time - the technology
> 	to fix it did not evolve until the VT200 series."
> Is this true?  I've never heard of a ROM being damaged by reading it a
> lot.

Then we'll have to send John Titor back to get some "fresh" VT100s!