bryce@eris (;;;;0000) (02/21/88)
>I thought the Amiga was the most flakey multitasking machine I'd ever seen >(forgive me Commodore), because of all the damn GURU MEDITATION errors I >got, but since I removed the supposedly fine [8 megabyte memory] >board they went away! The really bad news is that this is more common than you might expect. Nobody stops to think "It's the ram board". They blame the software. On the IBM there is a large problem with boards that "almost" work in a {8,12.5} Mhz clone. Once in a while the memory takes a hit. I personally know of a manufactuer that NEVER got their Amiga board working properly. Leave a few Workbench "Clocks" running, and the board would die in an average of ~15 hours. Use a competitor's board, all is ok. They shipped anyway. (One of these internal plug-in-the-68000 hacks that pull *OVR with no special precautions). >I was very carefull when installing the chips on the board, and ran the >tests many times, it checked out, but creates these random errors not only >during format, but at random times. The answer is probably some real TOUGH memory diagnostics. Nothing on the order of the whimpy stuff that usually comes with the memory boards. It needs to do patterns, leave entire rows unrefreshed for long periods, run the blitter in nasty mode to freeze 68000 cycles, execute STOP and hold it for long periods, and any other nasty software tricks that might exist. No, I'm not planning on writing it. A favorite hardware trick is to drop the voltage and raise the temperature a bit... if the board still works, then the design is probably sound. If not, the trouble you are asking for will soon catch up with you. I know for a fact the memory in my Amiga 1000 would fail. |\_/| . ACK!, NAK!, EOT!, SOH! {o o} . Bryce Nesbitt (") BIX: mleeds (temporarily) U USENET: bryce@eris.berkeley.EDU -or- ucbvax!eris!bryce