[Coco] Bad memory reported by Disto Coco III RAM Test by Tony Distefano

[Kip Koon]

Hi Michael,
Whenever a 512KB memory upgrade is installed in the Coco 3, the original 4 memory chips are removed and C65 & C66 are removed by cutting one leg and lifting up on the cap slightly.  That's the procedure I used when I added my 512KB memory board to my Coco 3. That upgraded Coco 3 is still running strong.  
As to the 8K address range that is bad, if an address line is truly bad, that 8K block would be bad everywhere, not just in one place I would think.  Maybe there is a logic problem somewhere maybe?
Can anyone shed more light on this situation?

Kip Koon
computerdoc at sc.rr.com
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Kip_Koon


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Michael R. Furman
> Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2016 11:37 AM
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Subject: [Coco] Bad memory reported by Disto Coco III RAM Test by Tony Distefano
> 
> Does anyone have a manual for the Disto Coco III RAM Test by Tony Distefano?
> 
> http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Disks/Utilities/Disto%20Coco%203%20RAM%20Test%20%28Tony%20Distefano%29%2
> 0%28Coco%203%29.zip
> 
>  I ran it on one of my Coco 3’s and it is returning an error, says that block 60 is bad, which I interpret to be 0x78000 to 0x79FFF
> 
> A second observation is that when loading certain programs in to BASIC from the CocoSDC those programs get corrupted at the same
> place every time.
> 
> I was looking at the schematics to try to figure this out and I am a bit confused.  What I see on the schematic is each of the 256k x 1
> chips on the 512 ram expansion board is attached to one data line and there are two sets of chips selected by WE0 or WE1.  The part I
> am confused about is what it means that a particular range of memory is bad.  If one data bit is bad across the entire 256k range I
> understand that one, that’s a bad chip. But it only seems to be bad in a particular 8k range of addresses, so maybe this is some issue
> with RAS or CAS or a flakey address line to only the WE1 set of chips?
> 
> What would happen if C65 or C66 still in place?  Why do they have those RC filters on RAS and CAS anyway?
> 
> —
>  Michael R. Furman
> Email: n6il at ocs.net
> Phone: +1 (408) 480-5865
> 
> 
> 
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