Whilst repairing vintage machines, a lot of RAM passes by my benches. Most of it works great, some of it is in not so good condition. It is possible to test RAM in a system, but that may not tell the whole story, particularly if a RAM stick causes instability. It can also be difficult to pinpoint exactly which stick is causing the problem. I’ve wanted a better solution for a while, and now I finally have one…
Innoventions was a company who created some fantastic RAM testing tools. Unfortunately the founder died a few years ago and the company folded.
The last RAM testing device they made was the RAMCHECK LX, but what I have is the predecessor, the RAMCHECK.
As you can see, it comes in a very nice case. This one I imported from the US, and it wasn’t cheap, but they were significantly more expensive new. It didn’t come with a power supply, but a 7.5V Meanwell power supply works great.
It is a modular device, you just plug on a module for the type of RAM that you want to check. What attracted me to this particular one is that it came with a 72-pin and 30-pin SIMM module.
To test it out, I grabbed a 72-pin SIMM I had lying around from an Acorn A7000 that I’m currently restoring. This is a video of it running basic tests (and my clumsy attempt to insert it whilst not moving the camera too much).
If you leave it running after this, it will do some extensive testing, including fluctuating the voltage and things like that.
I also grabbed a 30-pin SIMM to try out, I’m not entirely sure where this one came from, and I didn’t even try to figure out what size it was before plugging it in.
Well, I have a working 256KB 30-pin SIMM!
I’m keeping my eye out for some more modules, if Innoventions was still around, I’d buy them directly today. I’m also trying to figure out how to obtain firmware updates now that the company has gone.
In the meantime, all my repairs on machines with SIMMs will be tested on this machine.
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