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Cards failing on Chip memory test

Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2021 7:05 pm
by theq
Hey guys!

I have a two TF536 cards that are acting funny. Both cards are running the 02.08.20 firmware. The cards have been tested on a A500 and a A500+.

Both cards pass the fast memory test with flying colors. It can runs for hours end without any failure.
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IMG_2914.jpg (86.12 KiB) Viewed 3245 times

However, when doing the chip memory range it will fail early on.
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IMG_2915.jpg (104.27 KiB) Viewed 3245 times

The funny thing is that memory range 0x00000000 to 0x0000ffff is running flawlessly, on both cards. I have also found the test starts failing from address 0x0001f61f and onwards.
I have two other cards that are working great on the same machine.

I am thinking this have something to do with 24-bit vs 32-bit address modes, or am I missing something obvious here?

Edit: The cards will boot the machines fine. With and without IDE. It crashed eventually running some games like Turrican and Settlers. Frontier: Elite runs fine but with some artifacts. And playing .mod's work great as well.

Re: Cards failing on Chip memory test

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2021 2:27 pm
by theq
I found the culprits.
I swapped U5 and U6 to see if the fault moved accordingly. Both cards are working better now. Their solder pads most likely was in dire need of a re-flow.

Re: Cards failing on Chip memory test

Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2021 6:23 pm
by theq
After a more thorough test it seems that this is still a problem. More precisely on my A500+ only.
The memory test in the 00000000 - 001FFFFF fails around round 30-40. Turrican II and Settlers crash after about 15-25 minutes.

On my A500 with rev.6A motherboard with (and without) 1 MB CHIP RAM mod runs to round 150 without any errors.

I get no errors when running tests for over 10 rounds in the Z3 memory space (40000000 - 43FFFFFF).

To clarify; I have four TF536 cards where two of them are working perfectly and the other two are struggling in the 2 MB CHIP RAM space on my A500+.

Will continue to troubleshoot.

Re: Cards failing on Chip memory test

Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:30 pm
by terriblefire
the 08.20 firmware is for amiga 2000 only IIRC?

Re: Cards failing on Chip memory test

Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:58 pm
by Lynxman
I think I'm running the same Firmware in both my A500+. The zip file is called tf536r2-A500-A2000.zip and contains the file
f536r2_main_top_AMIGA_FULL_PHASE_7.jed dated 02.08.20.

Mine runs the chip range just fine.

Are you starting Test Kit from floppy or from harddisk? I think there's a conflict if you're running the memory test from harddisk with MMU enabled.

Re: Cards failing on Chip memory test

Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:01 pm
by terriblefire
Lynxman wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:58 pm I think I'm running the same Firmware in both my A500+. The zip file is called tf536r2-A500-A2000.zip and contains the file
f536r2_main_top_AMIGA_FULL_PHASE_7.jed dated 02.08.20.

Mine runs the chip range just fine.

Are you starting Test Kit from floppy or from harddisk? I think there's a conflict if you're running the memory test from harddisk with MMU enabled.
Yes i needs to be floppy but that firmware was touched for A2000.. there is an older one that doesnt work on 2000 but might be better on 500. Also try swapping the CPUs around.

Re: Cards failing on Chip memory test

Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2021 6:53 am
by theq
The tests have been done both from floppy and HDD, I'm afraid.
I will try swapping CPUs from my working cards to see if it changes.

Will try older firmware too just for the sake of it.

Thanks so far :)

Re: Cards failing on Chip memory test

Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2021 1:27 pm
by theq
Swapping CPUs didn't help, but I'm suspecting the problem lies with one or more socket pins not getting proper connection.

Re: Cards failing on Chip memory test

Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2021 3:02 pm
by theq
Been trying older firmwares without vail, so must be a hardware issue.

Got other great news, though. With the firmware dated 01.aug.20 I got my card working on my A1000 with my expansion slot adapter :D

Edit: Got it working even better with the 02.08.20-firmware. 8-)