erazmus Posted November 24, 2010 Share Posted November 24, 2010 I just finished building and installing a Wizztronics 800XL memory upgrade. Everything seems to be working, but I want to run some tests to make sure. I have a program called XRAM.COM (extended ram test 0.21.0). When I run it, it says that it finds 15 banks for a total of 240k. Banks 0x83, 0x8B, 0x8F all fail. Everything else tests okay. According to the documentation for the Wizztronics upgrade, it says valid banks rare from 4 to 15. Is the program misidentifying banks? Is this a known problem? Or do I have an error with my upgrade? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a8isa1 Posted November 25, 2010 Share Posted November 25, 2010 (edited) I just finished building and installing a Wizztronics 800XL memory upgrade. Everything seems to be working, but I want to run some tests to make sure. I have a program called XRAM.COM (extended ram test 0.21.0). When I run it, it says that it finds 15 banks for a total of 240k. Banks 0x83, 0x8B, 0x8F all fail. Everything else tests okay. According to the documentation for the Wizztronics upgrade, it says valid banks rare from 4 to 15. Is the program misidentifying banks? Is this a known problem? Or do I have an error with my upgrade? That's the same results I got while I had a Wizztronics 256K. Try MEMCHECK. memcheck.zip Edited November 25, 2010 by a8isa1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted November 25, 2010 Share Posted November 25, 2010 Hello guys IICR, this upgrade doesn't add 256kB but replaces the existing RAM. Resulting in 64kB of main memory and 192kB of extended memory. So 4 of the 16 banks are in main memory, that's why the memory test fails on four banks. sincerely Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erazmus Posted November 26, 2010 Author Share Posted November 26, 2010 Hmmm. MEMCHECK is not working for me. I get a brief black screen, then the regular screen comes back. If I press a key, the screen goes black and locks up. The 192k theory mentioned above seems to be the explanation. The mod involves removing all of the 64k chips and replacing them with 256k chips, so 64k of that needs to be used as base RAM. I am able to successfully use the RD command in SpartaDOS to create a ramdisk. It correctly recognizes it, and I'm able to read and write to it with no problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a8isa1 Posted November 26, 2010 Share Posted November 26, 2010 Hmmm. MEMCHECK is not working for me. I get a brief black screen, then the regular screen comes back. If I press a key, the screen goes black and locks up. Hmm, I just retested the program I uploaded to be sure it's not a corrupted file. It works fine. I have no explanation as to why it does not work for you. -Steve Sheppard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted November 27, 2010 Share Posted November 27, 2010 Here are a couple that I like. There are separate versions for the Rambo/Wiz. and the Newell 256K upgrades as well as a boot version that IIRC is needed to do a more complete test. There is also a good .doc file for it. These were from Glenn Smith. There is also another comprehensive tester which will try to print out a summary if your printer is on line. Good luck (and also, Hi-Steve!) -Larry Memory Testers.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erazmus Posted November 27, 2010 Author Share Posted November 27, 2010 Here are a couple that I like. There are separate versions for the Rambo/Wiz. and the Newell 256K upgrades as well as a boot version that IIRC is needed to do a more complete test. There is also a good .doc file for it. These were from Glenn Smith. There is also another comprehensive tester which will try to print out a summary if your printer is on line. Good luck (and also, Hi-Steve!) -Larry Thank you! These ones worked perfectly for me. I'm confident that my upgrade is now functioning correctly. During my poking around, I found that some of the IC legs were quite corroded. A quick brush with a glass pencil cleaned them up, and everything is rock solid. I also had an issue with the display going black and white once in a while, but I traced that down to an intermittent pot. Contact cleaner didn't bring it back to life, to a quick replacement and the machine is as good as new. Thank you everyone for all your help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted November 27, 2010 Share Posted November 27, 2010 The Piss-tronics is a cheap copy of the ICD RamboXL which is just a commercial Adaptation of the famous Claus Bucholz 256k memory upgrade from Compute Magazine. Of course its only 192k extended ram.. What'd you expect? Otherwise, it'd be called a 320k expansion, not 256k.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Jefferson Posted December 1, 2010 Share Posted December 1, 2010 The reason that the xram test reports some bad blocks is that it is putting a "magic value" into each bank of extended RAM, and since with this family of memory upgrades (Bucholz/Rambo), some of the banking bit values actually bank in the ram that is used by default for main ram, the testing software sees the magic value again and flags this as a failure. (I have never seen the source of the XRAM program, but I'm fairly confident that's how it is working). The failure is really just a feature of the memory upgrade circuit, as designed. The Piss-tronics is a cheap copy I have one of the Wizztronics upgrades sitting around waiting for a rainy day to put into a machine... I'm curious, why do you call it cheap? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wood_jl Posted December 1, 2010 Share Posted December 1, 2010 Wasn't the Buchholz mod in BYTE magazine, sometime in 1985? "Quarter Meg Atari." Didn't it use some other (32k?) scheme, so it was different? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sloopy Posted December 1, 2010 Share Posted December 1, 2010 Wasn't the Buchholz mod in BYTE magazine, sometime in 1985? "Quarter Meg Atari." Didn't it use some other (32k?) scheme, so it was different? he originally made it before atari released the 130XE, and made the 'standard' banking scheme we know and love... so he used something he thought was good, which is banking the upper half of the 32k address range... when the 130XE was released he changed it to use the same setup as the 130XE without the seperate antic access... sloopy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Binarygeek Posted December 2, 2017 Share Posted December 2, 2017 Here are a couple that I like. There are separate versions for the Rambo/Wiz. and the Newell 256K upgrades as well as a boot version that IIRC is needed to do a more complete test. There is also a good .doc file for it. These were from Glenn Smith. There is also another comprehensive tester which will try to print out a summary if your printer is on line. Good luck (and also, Hi-Steve!) -Larry Hi Larry. I know I'm just a bit late to this party, but thanks so much for the memory testers as it easily allows me to test all 256K. Regards, Rick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1050 Posted December 4, 2017 Share Posted December 4, 2017 http://atariage.com/forums/topic/189604-small-thing-memtest-10-1996-jaku-b/?do=findComment&comment=3815398 Just in case Larry missed a few. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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