Hi All,
There's a story here, but keeping it short-ish,
I've just come into possession of ANOTHER ramtester, the RAMCHECK LX.
Three years ago I got a SIMCHECK II (older product from the same company) that can do SUN 200-pin memory, SIMMs for every kind (including PIMMS) and individual chips (like what you see in old 286/386 PC boards and Arcade cabinets - SIP/DIP/ZIP chips)! I personally worked with the company to help refurbish this older unit in Summer 2019, I visited their website two weeks ago and it gives the false impression they were still in business, so I bought a beat-up/used RAMCHECK LX (latest product they made!) from eBay for a fair price. Well, when I tried my login on their site after the eBay auction had concluded, it errored, not good, all emails came back "closed" or undeliverable, not good!.
I had to go three pages deep to find the notice that they closed up shop suddenly (without selling off their inventory!) in December 2020...gawd damn! Well, I was already on the hook for this eBay buy...so I doubled down. When I got the unit today, it was missing all it's screws (bad sign) and had some issues. But I had a contact from the company that I found worked at a dealer now, so he filled me on what happened and gave me critical power info I needed to emulate its PSU.
I used my bench PSU and booted it, it came up fine! And oddly enough it had the last firmware on it! Seems it was in use until about 3-4 years ago! I had no daughtercard on it, just the base unit. But I fixed every other issue I found and got proper screws and re-secured the unit.
So I located a 44, 50, 54-pin TSOP DRAM (DDR1 & DDR2 tech) chip-tester daughtercard for my new tester on eBay (paid just as much for that daughter card as entire base unit), the daughter cards for this model are normally VERY expensive (normal price on this 3-chip daughter board was like $600 though, most are $1,000+). I just won the auction for this daughtercard today and paid for it.
I looked around for what I could use this for and it dawned on my that SGIs used DRAM chips in their mid to last workstations. Now Fuel/Tezro/Origin RAM is DRAM 66-pin TSOP memory so that's OUT, shame I know. But everything else...is IN!
I check my stash, O2 RAM is 50-pin DRAM TSOP (Fits!), Octane RAM is 54-pin DRAM TSOP (fits!) so that means this card SHOULD be able to verify/check/heat-up/burn-in the actual TSOP memory chips off these SGI models! Yes, not as convenient as a DIMM slot...but at least it's something.
Now I have a pair of O2 RAM modules where 1 module is BAD (sometimes flips wrong bit), so I'm going to test this theory on those modules. Yes, I have to remove and clean every chip...tiresome to place it into the testing socket. However, this opens up a new market...BAD RAM repair.
I won't get this daughtercard until the end of the month, then I'll need to order the real AC adapter from this dealer contact (after the O2 test), then we're in business!
So that means, if this all goes well, I'll be calling for BAD SGI RAM! If everyone could please check your closets for what you have. I don't know much about like Iris RAM (I should be able to read that stuff with my older tester setup), but this new tester is about DDR1 and DDR2 level tech and from what I can see that's O2 and Octane(2).
Since this stuff isn't made anymore repair on large density modules would be worth it. Now this unfortunately doesn't mean I have a quick way of testing unknown modules for a good/bad pass result. I have to desolder each chip off the DIMM module and test each chip in a special holder/socket. So this really only applies to module sets you know you have an issue with crashes, exceptions, or won't boot when installed. Because it's me checking each chip, then replacing the ones that come up bad.
If I can find a NOS socket on the daughtercard (they are replaceable but from an old Yamaichi socket line), I might be able to rig up a hardness to use IC clips to clip onto soldered-on chips while on the module (that would be cool). But I'm uncertain if the bus lines would interfere with testing or not. So for now, chips-only.
But this is good news! We may not have to throw away "bad RAM" for these units. With exception of the last memory modules (Origin 3000 arch type), most of them will be covered by this tester setup (both this new model and my old model).
Stay tuned for the O2 memory test (when I get this daughter card, that was shown to work), I'll put another repair service post up for memory modules. I may not be able to find original DRAM ICs to replace the bad module DRAM ICs with, I may need to scavenge from other SGI modules that are too damaged to be installed or the like.
NEED -> 