Bought an untested Amitek/Hawk 8MB off eBay...

[Zetr0]

I am sure that if I had the time I could work out the the PAL equations - its a matter of having the time. =/

[alexh]

Because they have storage it's not just a question of try all combination of inputs and monitor outputs.

[Retrofan]

There's something with the Peel or the PAL chip in that boards. I know at least 4 people including me that can't run it with more than 4mb's.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=64122

[ElectroBlaster]

I had one of these boards a while back and it had 8megs on it and was working 100%... Cant remember who I sold it to, somebody over on Amibay.

I did some pictures of it setup for 8mb etc for the buyer.

EDIT: It was ok on 3.1 roms but then I never used the pcmcia slot. Afaik it had to be downgraded to 4mb.

[alexh]

There at least two types of memory chips you can find on an 8-Meg SIMM.

I found that for the Atari Falcon that 3rd party SIMM adapters would only take a SIMM with one of the two types of memory chips.

Look up the chip numbers on your SIMMS and in the datasheets look for *Mx4 and *Mx8 (where the * is a number).

For example an 8Mbyte SIMM made with 8 chips can made from either be 2Mx4 or 1Mx8

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by alexh

There at least two types of memory chips you can find on an 8-Meg SIMM.

I found that for the Atari Falcon that 3rd party SIMM adapters would only take a SIMM with one of the two types of memory chips.

Look up the chip numbers on your SIMMS and in the datasheets look for *Mx4 and *Mx8 (where the * is a number).

For example an 8Mbyte SIMM made with 8 chips can made from either be 2Mx4 or 1Mx8

Geometry, 2M x 4 bits or 1M x 8 bits

[Zetr0]

Its very unlikely to find 4 or 8MB SIMM's with an 8 bit arrangement, the most common is 4 bits wide.

As we know Memory is made of cells that contain a certain number of bits - as mentioned above the 4 bit arrangement is most common, however this is not really the geometry of a memory module.

Memory is like a spreadsheet - it has rows, columns and cells - now if it has more rows than columns then it is a Narrow Memory Matrix, and if it has more columns than rows then it is a Wide Memory Matrix, obviously equal columns and rows make a Square Matrix.

The most common is a Wide Matrix, as at the time ROW refresh circuitry was cheaper to implement with existing memory IC's - however as memory chips became more evolved with internally - linked - refreshes reducing memory circuitry cost - various memory matrix's flooded the market with EDO (Extended Data Out) and FPM (Fast Page Mode) methods of refresh comming to the market.

The Hawk RAM boards are very simple in what they do and to what they can do it on. While very unlikely to come across under 16MB you wont be able to run any SIMM with a 4k refresh (only 1K refresh).

I suspect in this instance that the Memory and or the Memory Controller (See PAL's) are faulty. My sincere sympathies for the buyer in this regard, sadly unless we have a whip-around, I seriously doubt much can be done to help.