Hello all,
I recently got a "new old stock" XEGS, and it's been acting really weird. Long story short, sometimes it works fine and I can use it for 25-30 mins without issue. Other times it won't even start, or will start and then glitch out/freeze after just a couple minutes.
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More details below:
The power supply is one of the more reliable ones, but I also got an aftermarket one just to be safe.
The first thing I did when I got it was to run the internal diagnostics. It's went through them all lightning fast (so fast you could barely follow what was happening on the screen). I chalked it up to it being NOS or cold or something, so let it sit for a bit.
After letting it sit for a bit, I did the diag test again, and it passed fine (all performed at regular speed).
Next I tried the built in Missile Command, and no problems.
Next test was to start up BASIC and run a hello world program for a few minutes. I was sad to see that I couldn't even get that far—halfway through typing the second statement, the screen turned gray and froze.
I opened the unit to see if there was anything I could reseat, but it looks like everything is unsocketed on these MBs.
A short while later I tried running some games with my UNOCART, and surprisingly was able to play without issue for 5-10 mins.
Resetting into BASIC, this time I could get a simple program running on loop for 5 mins straight without a problem.
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The next day, I booted it up, and basically could get nothing to work without the unit either glitching the graphics and freezing, freezing to a gray screen, or not even booting (no image at all, or just a cursor).
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I think the thing is basically on its last legs, and the random nature of the failures suggest to me the RAM is bad, but would appreciate any input/knowledge you all could share.
Returning it is basically out of the question, and if it's an issue I could track down and resolve by replacing some chips, it would be an interesting project to work on in my spare time. However, the random nature of the freezing is really throwing me for a loop. I haven't touched the unit in a few days, but there would be time where it worked fine for 25-30 mins, and other times where it hardly works at all.
Thanks for any knowledge you can share!