New to board A3000 question
 

Hello, new to the board I know this is going back pretty far information wise
Having problem with my A3000. I tried to increase my fast ram from 8meg.
to 16meg. The system did not recognize the upgrade. No change shown.
Does anyone have any Ideas on this. I have read that this system auto
recognizes ram. I am wondering how this process takes place hardware
or software or both.

In short I am new to the 3000 system and I am looking for answers to many questions that I have.

This my system A3000, Serial number about 400 Wb 2.X

Any information would appreciated

Mray

It would help if you told us how you upgraded it, with what memory etc.

Sorry about that, they were zip packages 1meg by 1 a total of 16 additional

16 pieces of 1 meg by 1 would be 2 megabytes.

I see I have a problem! I need to verify my description Will get back to the board

The correct description would be 1MBx4 TC514400AP-80

I am getting conflicting descriptions. The latest for TC514400AP-80
is 4MBx1 at this point I could use some clarity

So finally I found the old school data sheet it specifies 1MBx4bit Zip
So any thoughts to the upgrade failure?

Could be fake china ram. A lot of zip are rebadged or faulty.

Try removing the new ram. If all still works then remove the old ram. Try populating the new ram one bank at a time to see if you can work out if you have some bad zips.

Assume you have read this?: http://www.l8r.net/technical/t-3000ram.shtml

16 pieces of 1 MB * 4 bits gives 8 megabytes.

But as said above, fake or bad RAM is abound. And to make matters worse, installing ZIP memory is something you do only once, unless you have the hands of a goldsmith.

Fake or faulty components had not occurred to me. Moving them around seems the
way to eliminate that possibility.

Yes I have read the link

Thank You

Remove and reinsert certainly looks tricky, but I will give it a try

Thank You

Maybe you could try this A3000 memory test program from Aminet?:
http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/ZIPTest

A little info here: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?p=836723

Zack, Thank You I was unaware of this program It may save me great amount
of time !

It all depends on what was fitted originally and what you added.

You need to know the density of both the original & new parts, the type of both (Fast Page Mode or Static Column) and their speed grades.

The motherboard JUMPER J852 & J853 settings. (They should both be on 1-2 which would indicate 1Mx4 parts)

If you added 16 new ZIP chips and you already had 8MiB of ZIP chips then you must have had 16 chips previously and now all 32 ZIP slots should now be full?

That didn't seem to be ZIP RAM. I got back DIP RAM when googling. That is not to say they don't have the same part number but it would be unusual. Check again and report back (photo?)

You do need 1Mx4 parts to get 16MiB.

You should have had 16*1Mx4 parts already fitted to get to 8MiB

I suspect you had FPM parts and you've added SC parts or vice versa. Or perhaps they are a very slow speed grade?

Shouldn't the datasheet have been quite specific about their being static column?

ram
 

Looking closer the AP suffix designates DIP, the suffix Z would be correct.
Yes all 32 positions are filled . The data sheet references Fast Page Mode
There are other brands of ram previously installed namely Oki,Hitachi,Toshiba the Oki is rated at 70ns the rest at 80ns the 70ns Oki makes up one bank of
the previously installed 8MB which is still working. At this moment would have
to look up datasheets on the other manufacturers for FPM or SC to be certain.
Gives me some more homework to do. As to the jumpers I am certain 852
is correct. After much searching jumper 853 does not exist. Looking at pictures of the installed ram I see 70ns installed in the same bank 0 with
80ns I read that could be a problem, I believe it was working before.

Thank You

You have standard page mode ram.
70ns and 80ns can be mixed..the recommended slowest ram is 80ns.

static column ends in 402,i.e. 514402.
You can mix static column and page mode ram,but page mode must be in the first sockets.
If all your ram is page mode you should be good, if it's not showing up you likely have some bad ram. Check all the ram part #'s tho to be sure you aren't mixing them.

if you bought ram from UTSOURCE,espect bad ram.

I have a proper zipram tester if you can't figure it out with the ziptest program and would be happy to test them for you.
I live in TX also. Pm me if u need help.

3000 ram
 

Mech,
Thank you for the very informative reply.
and for your gracious offer. I may at some
point need to take you up on that. My windows
based laptop went hard down, so am not able to
transfer the ziptest program to the 3000. Have parts on order
so resolution of this problem is pushed down the road for a couple of weeks
Nice to know we are neighbors
Thanks again

a3000 ram problem
 

So I thought I would update the ram problem to those that viewed and replied to my posts. I Have included a couple of photos To show the results or the ramtest program I ran. I might mention this a great little program, (highly recommend). The photos
reveal I have several problems with the most notable the address lines on ram bank 0 bad. With possible actual bad ram at other locations. I believe this was mostly caused by myself by firmly seating the existing ram (OCD). So I will be diving into this more deeply.. And thoughts are welcomed.
Thank you