mjw@f.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Witbrock) (05/03/87)
Keywords:How do you tell if it goes?
IF YOU FIND CONSTRUCTION TALES TEDIOUS, PLEASEE SKIP TO THE QUESTIONS AT THE
END.
Well, I did it, I shelled out $230 for the 1M aminetics squeeze ram.
They told me it would be shipped on the 20th (last month), it was shipped on
the 2nd of this month - but that's OK 'cause it turned out it arrived
(yesterday) just after my last exam (hardware, coincidentally).
So, flushed with enthusiasm, I went on a 10:30 pm search for solder, and
started building the thing. 5am this morning and I was finished (It should
have taken less time than this - slightly underpowered soldering iron). I
plugged it in (no easy task, I can tell you - I have holes in my fingers
from the wires on the kickstart board). Did it go? .... The heck it did. The
machine didn't get to ask for the kick start disk...
So, I had another go at it this evening, - resoldered a few joints, replaced
a munged ic socket - pluged in .... and it worked (I thought). After running
through the house yelling the world this (the world yawned) I came back and
looked at it again.
1) There were only about 1.38M shown (not >1.40M as suggested by the manual)
[ but maybe my startup-sequence was taking more memory than expected
(e.g. buffers...]
2) After doing a couple of window moves a few pixels on the screen changed
(sort of bit rot). Then things started to get worse. A few mouse movements
later and the screen went into a mode where every second (interlaced) line
was missing (which fixed itself when you moved a window). Then the machine
whent into a repetitive reboot ....
I turned it off, took the board out (further holes in fingers) and put the
computer back together again [ it works just fine thank goodness].
--QUESTIONS
1)Does anyone have any ideat what the above symptoms might be symptoms of.
2)If they could be symptoms of a bad memory chip (chips) is there some
program which can tell me what one (i.e. a mem checker) - doing it by
successive replacement of 32 chips is impractical considering where the
board goes.
3)MOST IMPORTANTLY: the documentation from aminetics says that the squeeze
ram is not guaranteed to work with REV A MADE IN JAPAN kickstart boards. My
amiga has one of these. Aminetics do not say what constitutes not working.
Are my troubles consistent with this being the problem (boy do I hope
someone from aminetics reads this...)
4) Any other suggestions.
I will ring aminetics on monday and consult them, but if anyone has any
information before than (or after for that matter) please email to me.
I will post what I find out.
DISCLAIMER:
This isn't a slur on Aminetics - The manual for the board is very clear and
straight forward. The board is high quality, as are the parts (though the
headers and header sockets (especially the latter) would benifit from being
pre-cut). The manual contains all the hints and caveats one could want. I'm
just frustrated that it doesn't work for me... I NEED that memory.
EMAIL address mjw@f.gp.cs.cmu.edu (ARPANET)
anything else, send it to the above address care of seismo.
Seismo knows how to get to cmu.
--
====================================================================
Michael.Witbrock@f.gp.cs.cmu.edu
US Mail: Michael Witbrock
Dept of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA 15213-6890
USA
Telephone : (412) 268 3621 [Office]
(412) 681 3806 [Home]
========================================================
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[Translated from sign language] ).