ButINeededThatName
Experienced Member
I recently acquired a "presumed dead" 5150 (64kb-256kb system board) for free earlier this week. Turns out the generic-brand high-wattage PSU someone swapped into it had died, (what an absolute surprise) and swapping in an IBM branded unit brought it right back to life. Since then though, I've been chasing memory errors. At this point, I'm fairly certain one of the soldered on RAM chips have given up on life, though I wanted to get a second opinion before I shelve this system (I don't have any of the right tools to safely de-solder ICs).
Currently, I have pulled all of the RAM chips out of Banks 1/2/ & 3, leaving the soldered-on 64k at Bank 0 as the only installed system memory. I have switches 3 & 4 on block 1 both set to the ON position (Bank 0 populated only) and switches 1/2/3/4/ & 5 on block 2 all set to the ON position (64kb RAM installed). Upon POST, I receive errors 1055 201 (Bit Error and Memory Test Failed) and weirdly, 131 (Cassette Wrap Test Failed). If I try and boot to DOS from drive A, I receive "Parity Check 1" and the system locks up, requiring a hard-reset. If I remove the DOS boot disk the system boots to BASIC but only shows 12252 bytes of memory available.
Again, I'm pretty sure this is indicative of a bad memory IC on Bank 0, but if there's something else I can try to resolve this, I'm open to suggestions.
Currently, I have pulled all of the RAM chips out of Banks 1/2/ & 3, leaving the soldered-on 64k at Bank 0 as the only installed system memory. I have switches 3 & 4 on block 1 both set to the ON position (Bank 0 populated only) and switches 1/2/3/4/ & 5 on block 2 all set to the ON position (64kb RAM installed). Upon POST, I receive errors 1055 201 (Bit Error and Memory Test Failed) and weirdly, 131 (Cassette Wrap Test Failed). If I try and boot to DOS from drive A, I receive "Parity Check 1" and the system locks up, requiring a hard-reset. If I remove the DOS boot disk the system boots to BASIC but only shows 12252 bytes of memory available.
Again, I'm pretty sure this is indicative of a bad memory IC on Bank 0, but if there's something else I can try to resolve this, I'm open to suggestions.