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- Oct 11, 2004
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Ive seen alot of reports of Twinmos SP/UTT sticks up and failing.
Wanted to relate something Ive noticed. I have one stick which does 250Mhz 1T on NForce2 which also occasionally DIES.
Yes, suddenly wont boot/post, I get beeeeep. Thinking it died I put it aside, next day I tested it in another machine and it was fine, put it back in main machine ran again for hours and upon a reboot .....beeeep. If i hadnt reboot'd it would have kept right on working, which sure doesnt seem like any kind of DDR chip problem to me.
Now turning power off, pulling it out, putting back in, etc doesnt work. it has to sit for hours unplugged before it comes back to life.
This got me thinking, what ELSE is on the stick besides the ram chips.....hmmmm.... the SPD rom!!
This stick does NOT have the issue at all at 3.2Vdimm or below. Only if I go to 3.3+-3.5 does it enter this flakeout mode.
I think that the SPD rom chip Twinmos is using cant always handle the high Vdimm we are subjecting these too, so SOME sticks end up with this "latchup" happening. Ill have to experiment with this SPD rom, Ill put a diode in the power pin so the rom runs at lower V then the Vdimm by about .7V, see if that keeps the error from occuring.
Just thought I'd pass it along. People with "DEAD" sticks might find they come back to life if you plug it into a lower voltage (3.2V or less) setup after a day on the bench.
Wanted to relate something Ive noticed. I have one stick which does 250Mhz 1T on NForce2 which also occasionally DIES.
Yes, suddenly wont boot/post, I get beeeeep. Thinking it died I put it aside, next day I tested it in another machine and it was fine, put it back in main machine ran again for hours and upon a reboot .....beeeep. If i hadnt reboot'd it would have kept right on working, which sure doesnt seem like any kind of DDR chip problem to me.
Now turning power off, pulling it out, putting back in, etc doesnt work. it has to sit for hours unplugged before it comes back to life.
This got me thinking, what ELSE is on the stick besides the ram chips.....hmmmm.... the SPD rom!!
This stick does NOT have the issue at all at 3.2Vdimm or below. Only if I go to 3.3+-3.5 does it enter this flakeout mode.
I think that the SPD rom chip Twinmos is using cant always handle the high Vdimm we are subjecting these too, so SOME sticks end up with this "latchup" happening. Ill have to experiment with this SPD rom, Ill put a diode in the power pin so the rom runs at lower V then the Vdimm by about .7V, see if that keeps the error from occuring.
Just thought I'd pass it along. People with "DEAD" sticks might find they come back to life if you plug it into a lower voltage (3.2V or less) setup after a day on the bench.
