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From: collins@well.sf.ca.us (Steve Collins)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Frances help!
Message-ID: <19482@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 9 Aug 90 17:10:58 GMT
Distribution: comp.sys.amiga.hardware comp.sys.amiga.tech
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 46


Ack Pfft!
I have been working on my Frances board to the detriment of my
marrige and sanity for several months now. Still no joy.

I finally figured out that I had some wierd data buffers and saw some
light at the end of the tunnel when I put LS chips in. 

Now, the darned thing sort of works on rare occasions with 2 drams installed.
There are a couple of oddities still to be explained however:

1) most of the time I just get zeros out of the ram. It seems to be refreshed,

the data buffers are being switched and I'll be darned if I can find anything
amis, but the numbers I put in, don't come back out. The thing works about 1 
time in 10 or 20 ( ie just enough to keep me from pitching it out the window),
but when it does, it seems to work till powerdown, without being flaky. 
I get real jazzed and switch it off to put in more ram and it doesn't work
when I turn it on again.


2) When I put 2 chips in, the memory (whether it works or not ) seems to 
show up at unexpected addresses. For example: If I put the chips in the
back two sockets ( as you look at the amy from the front) the ram
seems to show up at 0x400003, 0x400007... etc rather than at 0x400000,
0x400004... Aren't these chips connected to data 0-8? Is this right? If not
then what's happening??


3) Occasionally, the thing hangs at modeload with francyc low.


Other info:
I have the thing in an A500. 
My Lucas went together in a snap and worked fine.
I can solder, and haven't ripped traces off the board or anything like that.
I have run the clock through a buffer because it seemed to help me
get lucas through the boot sequence and modeload with the frances in place.
 I wasn't sure what to do with the termination resistors (?) on the clock ,
 but I left them on the clock (ie before the buffer rather than after...)

Any, hints, wild guesses, or even just stuff I can check out would be 
highly appreciated.

                            TIA
                                steve collins