Self test Problem....HELP!

[Mongy]

Hi...

 

I recently got an XEGS. I plugged it in, hooked it up, turned it on, and, it ran the self Test. I saw that it seemed to get stuck on the RAM portion. It will not do anything else. I have tried everything....it wont boot Missle Command, it wont boot a Cart, nothing....just goes on the Self Test and tests the RAM indefinitely.

 

 

Any ideas???

[mimo]

Start by replacing the ram, you will have to de-solder the original ram, and imo add sockets for the new RAM

[Rybags]

The XEGS uses almost identical type of RAM chips that many old ISA graphics cards used. Often they'll just be different (usually faster) with the latency (last 2 characters are usually the access time in nano-seconds).

 

If you're really lucky you might find one that has them socketed and you can just pull them out.

[+Roydea6]

Have you tried to boot without the keyboard attached. If so it should goto Missile game and bypass the selftest. If doesn't work then replace ram.

 

Jumping straight into selftest could be a faulty OS chip also, if boot fails checksum.

Edited November 10, 2008 by rdea6

[spookt]

I guess one question is do any of the bars / blocks on the selftest show up red ?

[Mongy]

I guess one question is do any of the bars / blocks on the selftest show up red ?

 

 

hmmm, good point....ya, both bars of the ROM are red....the RAM is all green, it just keeps cycling through all the blocks.

 

 

 

hmmm

[Rybags]

Might just be a dodgy solder join or trace on/leading to the OS ROM... or same from one of the ICs used for memory decode.

[+bob1200xl]

The OS does a checksum of the ROM and sends you to Self-Test if it is bad. Since Self-Test itself runs from ROM, I would say that the Atari ROM circuits work and it's probably a bad address or two in the ROM chip.

 

Bob

 

 

I guess one question is do any of the bars / blocks on the selftest show up red ?

 

 

hmmm, good point....ya, both bars of the ROM are red....the RAM is all green, it just keeps cycling through all the blocks.

 

 

 

hmmm

[atariksi]

Hi...

 

I recently got an XEGS. I plugged it in, hooked it up, turned it on, and, it ran the self Test. I saw that it seemed to get stuck on the RAM portion. It will not do anything else. I have tried everything....it wont boot Missle Command, it wont boot a Cart, nothing....just goes on the Self Test and tests the RAM indefinitely.

 

 

Any ideas???

 

I also had an XEGS that did the same thing. Too much soldering to do in those machines to fix/replace ICs. If you're good at fixing Ataris, I suggest picking up an 800XL like here:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=320317622484

 

This one has almost every chip socketed, but I can't get it to boot past a gray screen.

"Coincidentally", I also got a C64 from someone that also shows a gray screen which is also up on auction.

 

Also, regarding your problem on the XEGS, it can also be that the ROM is partly bad. I have had an Atari that was sitting in the basement and the ROM chip was the only thing that went bad and that too partly as sometimes you could boot to self-test and sometimes it wouldn't boot at all (reddish screen). I replaced the ROM and it worked.