Re: ZipGSx Upgrade Problem??

[marvinisnot@home.com (Marvin Miller)]

Hi RubyWand;

The sockets are in the proper location. The card actually has some
silkscreening to show where the sockets should be and this works with
either .3 or .6. Also, in your faq it mentioned just cutting out
sections and putting in sections. Extrapolating on these  two sources
- they're in the right place.

As for oscillator, it's the stock one for 7 MHz proc speed. I didn't
want to change anything else at the start, and the card does work, but
only with the DIP set for 32k cache. I checked the soldering on the
back of the second bank of chips (obviously first bank works as it
runs at the original 32k) and they all look 100% As I mentioned, the
job went great and I was very confident of the work (I have zip for
soldering skills but it looks good :-)

Is it right to have 4 of the same SRAM's, or did I need to buy two of
one type and two of another? All I did was get 4 identical SRAM's with
two being a slower rating. Correct?

Also, is the order correct? This is from left to right as viewed head
on
;
TAG 15ns DATA 20ns TAG 15ns DATA 20ns

If that's all correct, I'd have to say I have either;

- A bad chip
- Bad soldering

Hmmmm......

Best Wishes;
Marvin Miller



On Mon, 20 Nov 2000 23:45:15 -0600, Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>
wrote:

>Marvin Miller writes ...
>> 
>> Hi;
>> 
>> I have a ZipGsx that I just did an upgrade on. Specifially, I soldered
>> in (4) .300 sockets and installed new cache memory chips. All went
>> really well with the work, it took a while (about 4 hours) but came
>> out looking more/less like no one had been there!! I was, and am, very
>> pleased with the work.
>> 
>> I bought 4 new chips for the card and I'm wondering if this is where
>> the problem lies. Here's the deal;
>> 
>> I bought (2) 32kX8 SRAM's at 15ns AND
>> I bought (2) 32kX8 SRAM's at 20ns
>> 
>> On the card there are 4 sockets labelled;
>> 
>> TAG, DATA than TAG, DATA
>> 
>> Understanding that the TAG should be faster than the data, I put the
>> chips in like this;
>> 
>> 15ns 20ns 15ns 20ns
>> 
>> I than went in and changed the  7&8 DIP switches to OFF as per the
>> FAQ. I plugged it in and it didn't work! I got worried a little, but
>> realizing that everything had went so well with the soldering - I
>> changed the 7&8 dips back to were they were and re-tried. Presto!
>> All works well as long as the Zip's Dip's are set to 32k. This Zip
>> originally had 32K but should now have 64K.
>> 
>> So, I'm wondering if I have the chips in the wrong order or something
>> like that? The memory I bought were just standard 32kX8 SRAM's with
>> two being a little slower than the rest.
>> 
> ....
>
>     What oscillator frequency are you using?
>
>     Check your 300 mil RAM placement. Unless your board's RAM layout is different
>from ours, each skinny RAM should be plugged in to the left and center columns. The
>center and right columns are the same-- i.e. RAMs plugged into these two columns
>would not do anything.
>
>     If the RAM chips are placed correctly and the board still does not work in
>"64k" mode, you could try swapping in a slower oscillator module.
>
>
>
>Rubywand