Hello everyone,I'm trying to bring my Apple IIe back to life, but I'm getting an "out of memory" error, and I’m not sure where to start troubleshooting. :(
Has anyone encountered this issue before or can point me in the right direction?
Sometimes when I start the computer I'm getting this startup screen
Thanks in advance!Riccardo
does built in diagnostic pass?
There are two cases:
1. it starts with a beep and suddenly teh out of memory screen
2. starts withoup a beep with this screen
that doesn't answer my question. do the three finger solute (ctrl-close apple-reset; depress all three keys at the same time) and run the built-in diagnostic. that's the simpliest test requiring no additional software.
Thank you for your support!
I've this screen after the diagnostic.
IMG_5318 - dimensioni medie.jpeg
and this after multiple press for the diagnostic
IMG_5319 - dimensioni medie.jpeg
My first suspicion is a bad DRAM chip, especially if your board has Micron Technologies chips in it (MT). If you have memory errors that are affecting page zero (lowest memory addresses) it can cause even the startup diagnostics to fail spectactularly. If your RAM chips are socketed, try switching their order and see if anything changes. If they're soldered you've got a bit of work to do. I don't know what your soldering skills are like. It's not a terribly tough job to remove the RAM chips and solder sockets in, but you can ruin the PCB if you don't know what you are doing.
My second suspicion would be a bad ROM chip. If the ROM is corrupted it can cause extremely weird behavior including the kind of things your pictures show.
If you have a ROM card or an EPROM programmer it can make diagnosing ROM issues much easier. With a ROM card of some kind you can usually try switching the active image to the one on the card and see if it will boot up. With a programmer you can read the ROMs and compare the contents to known good images.
My RAM chips are soldered , but maybe is there right to learn how to solder ? ;) I've find this article on how to remove RAM, but this will damage the current chips, so I need new ones. Do you have suggestions on where to buy them?
I've to say that after a bunch of resets it might happen that it enters some mode where I can even write with the keyboard and received "SYNTAX ERROR". I don't know if this can help to diagnose what can be wrong.
IMG_5322 - dimensioni medie.jpeg