Gigatron MiniMax A500 Problem

[jeff b00toNic]

Hello,

I have a MiniMax for my Rev 6A board but the system doesn't seem to find the extra RAM. I'm sure it's the RAM Board and not the Gary adapter. Sometimes on boot I get a green screen (chipram error) .Looking at the Board itself, several solderspots seem to have cold joints but I'm not an expert.
Can someone have a look and tell me if I have to resolder it or am I totally wrong.
Also, is it necessary to remove the battery if its old?

[prowler]

Originally Posted by jeff b00toNic

Hello,

I have a MiniMax for my Rev 6A board but the system doesn't seem to find the extra RAM. I'm sure it's the RAM Board and not the Gary adapter. Sometimes on boot I get a green screen (chipram error) .Looking at the Board itself, several solderspots seem to have cold joints but I'm not an expert.
Can someone have a look and tell me if I have to resolder it or am I totally wrong.

Hello Jeff.

I honestly can't see any dry-looking joints there, but someone sure has perfected a minimalistic soldering technique sometime prior to assembling that board! It certainly wouldn't do any harm to fill in some of those voids.

Originally Posted by jeff b00toNic

Also, is it necessary to remove the battery if its old?

It's only really necessary to remove the battery if it shows signs of leakage (crystalline deposits) or swelling, although it's acceptable best-practice now to remove all old batteries as a precautionary measure.

Another early tell-tale sign of impending battery leakage is excessive greying of solder joints in the vicinity of the battery.

[jeff b00toNic]

Thanks Prowler.

If I don't manage to fix the board can the Ram on it be used for other expansions like the A590 HDD?
It's 256 4 bit 80ns on Sockets.

[MalleII]

Some of the solder joints on the pcb indeed do not look very good.
i would resolder them all.
maybe one ram chip is faulty or has bad contact in the socket.
remove all ram chips from the sockets, clean the pins and reseat them back.
if the rams are 514256 types you can test them on another 512k mem expansion, or use them on a A590. I would begin with a 512k setup (four chips populated on the A590 pcb).