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[biohazard77]

I have the NTSC version of the above copier running on an american snes.Most times when i boot up my DRAM is displaying 0MB instead of 32MB.This doesnt happen all the time but as i say it happens most of the time.Other times it will boot up fine,load the game but half way through playing it freezes and when i restart the machine its back to DRAM=0MB???Could this be faulty DRAM or something else?Any help greatly appreaciated as its driving me mad now .Thnx in advance

[MuppMan]

Thats exactly the same error i got with my Super magic drive.
I figure it must be the Ram since the "OS" itself loads up fine, with or without the Ramboard.

[biohazard77]

hey MuppMan.thnx for the relpy,do you also get the freezing mid game?wot is the best way to sort this problem or is it a case of replacing the ram board?ive opened my swc up and the solder joints dont look to hot on the ram board but not sure if i should attempt 2 repair them or just replace the whole board.does anyone know who stocks these,cant find them on this site?

[MuppMan]

Iam going to test a friends ProFighter ramboard in my magic drive this week and see if it really is a ram problem. Ill get back to you with the result.

And yes i do get freezes and crashes in games, some wont even boot anymore. It sounds like a ram error with the freezes cause thats what usually happens with PC Ram errors.

[biohazard77]

ok ill wait and see wot happens when u test the other ram then,fingers crosesd it works for you

[kyuusaku]

It's very unlikely you have bad RAM, it's probably just making bad connection.

MuppMan, early Pro Fighters use Magic Drive type RAM, but later models do not. There are 3 or more models of Magic Drive, 8M, 16M and 24M(32M). Each is backwards compatible with the smaller boards, but just don't expect a 16M Magic Drive to detect a 24M or 32M board from the Pro Fighter.

[MuppMan]

So where do you think the bad connection would occur? In the ram socket or on the motherboard itself? You know if this is a "common" problem ? Any tips on how to clean it up?

Stupid questions perhaps

Thanks anyway.

[kyuusaku]

The RAM socket. Just try reseating the board, maybe cleaning the connector if necessary. If that doesn't work, test the PCB and connector lines for continuity with a multimeter. If infact everything is OK then look at replacing the RAM. RAM shouldn't die though, I'd sooner suspect other ICs on the mainboard (maybe the 74XX157 or 257 chips used for multiplexing the address lines.)

[CrackLtd]

Eventually use a stronger power supply, that may help too. Btw, I had a very strange failure on my WildCard too. When i switched it off and on again to reset it and load a new game it still had the previously played game in its memory! I was not able to reset it even i switched the snes OFF! After experimenting a bit, i found out that the video SCART cable has to be unplugged! Crazy, eh? I unplug it from the monitor, switch snes off/on and put video connector in again, voila! The machine/wildcard is reseted. There seem to be enough power in one of the pins of the video cable that keeps the RAMs alive.

[biohazard77]

Just checked the continuity as kyuusaku advised,not good results.ive cleaned them up a bit and re-soldered some of the joints that seemed the worst,booted up with no probs.gonna leave it running for a few hours and see if it freezes up again.Ill post my results asap.

[biohazard77]

ok some good news,snes is still running fine,normally freezes before this amount of time has passed,had some wuality zelda action all day .lets hope this is now sorted.thanks for all input on this matter.Ill keep you posted on what happens.

[MuppMan]

Could you perhaps tell me were you re-solder some of the joints?
Seeing we had the same sort of problem and that the boards are pretty similar to each other. Here's a pic i found of the wildcard. ( Without ram board )



Thanks.

[biohazard77]

@MuppMan,the joints i soldered wernt on the board in the pic,i took kyuusaku's advise and checked the ram board first,i unplugged it and the joints on some of the capacitors looked a bit dodgy so i sorted them out,cleaning and soldering where necesarry and its still going strong now,gonna leave it on over night tho 2 see to wot happens.hope thats been ov some use you.let me know how you get on ok mate

[MuppMan]

Allrite, gonna try and clean my ram board as well.

[CrackLtd]

You should remove/replace the the battery, it started to leak already. See the brown area at the soldering points.