I Think My SDRAM Died Can Someone Confirm My Suspicion?

[gperezse82]

A couple days ago I turned on my Mister and tried to play Battle Garegga. I launched the game, but no dice: black screen. Next I tried X-men vs Street Fighter, which only displayed garbled graphics when launched. I tried Zaxxon next, which booted and played fine

After testing a few other games and encountering more black screens and garbled graphics I formatted my card and started from scratch. I launched Battle Garegga, but again, black screen.

I ran a memory test for two hours, which appears to show errors.

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Basically, any core that requires ram doesn’t work, and the cores that don’t require ram, work. I have little technical aptitude, but it looks to me like I need a new SDRAM board. Am I correct? Is there something I’m overlooking? Everything was working perfectly the day before I encountered these problems, and I made no changes to the INI settings.

[Xbytez]

The memory test core does indeed show errors, it has downclocked the SDRAM all the way to 70MHz and is still showing errors.

First I suggest unplugging the SDRAM board and then plug it again and run the memory test, just to eliminate the possibility of a bad contact on the pin header of the DE10-Nano and SDRAM boards 40 pin connector. If the test results remain the same I would expect the SDRAM board has a fault.

[gperezse82]

Thank you, I will try that.

[C-R-T]

Where did you get the ram?

Do you have a metal case on your mister? Without it, it is prone to ESD damage.

[grizzly]

Yes try unplug/plug in a couple of times, because if there are some crap/etc it can take more then one time to get rid of all.
I would probably also check both the RAM and DE-10 boards closely for any crap that potentially could cause a short/or some electricity creeping between pins/solder joints.
Probably worth trying both since it won´t take long!

[rickdangerous]

If you are in Europe and if you need help with repair just ask. I do it in few mins. Not asking money

Kind regards
Ricardo

[gperezse82]

I’ll have to open it up to see what ram model is used — it’s a prebuilt from ultimatemister I purchased several years ago. As I said, the unit worked perfectly up till now, and I have absolutely no reason to question the build quality (I’ve purchased 2 from ultimatemister and they’ve both been great). I’ll be checking to see if the board came lose when I have a little time away from my toddlers.

[gperezse82]

Well, I opened it up, removed the ram board, remounted it, and tried running some arcade games: same results (nothing requiring SDRAM works, memory test errors). I ordered a new board. Thank you all for your help!