"destructive read of a ROM"?

[Alexandre Souza]

>> "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.

    It seems not a matter of reading, but reading it with a wrong VPP 
voltage applied or something like that. As stated, this is a design issue.