Pretty Good Protection

[Shannen Durphey]

Hi, all.  I was attempting to copy a calibration last week, and was
having problems with the files coming up with zeros in all locations. 
After several attempts, and much double and triplechecking various
items, I decided it was the memcal.  Some investigation, and handy
work with a pick and razor blade revealed that the programmer had
clipped pin 28 of the 27256 chip.  A small pin completed the open
circuit, but now I couldn't get a read that would verify.  More
investigation revealed another clipped pin, I believe # 14.  There's a
pinout here: http://www.twinight.org/chipdir/giicm/27256.txt
which shows the pins as VCC and GND.  

What is VCC
Am I remembering incorrectly about the GND pin being clipped? (they
were cross corner, top right and lower left of chip)
Is there a brief way to explain why this worked, and how the chip was
still able to work in the ecm?

Shannen