So I just bought a bunch of ''new'' super nitendo S-WRAM chips from China. (pictures)

Ok this is pretty cool really but at the same time I got my eyebrow raised.

First of all, who would have thought there would be huge new old stocks of SNES ram chips still around?

So I found some distributors in china who claimed they had New super Nintendo S-WRAM chips in stock.
After a few emails and messing around getting different quotes I actually order 10 pieces.

Lo and behold it arrived in the mail today. They have a genuine look to them and are indeed what I was looking for.
But I could swear they look like board pulls and not new chips...

Anyhow they to not appear damaged or anything but they do not look new to me.
They are a mix up of different production codes and do not seem to follow. Also have tin remnants on the legs.

I figured it was too good to be true to have those things brand new.
But still If they are good original chips in working condition maybe that will do. I will try some install on SNES motherboard that I suspect have bad RAM and see what happens.

 

How much did you pay and have you tested them yet?

 

It cost around 30 USD shipped for 10. It arrived quickly and well packaged. I have not tried them yet, just got them yesterday but I will try a transplant in the following days.

I have some SNES that either display black screen or the games crash, always at the same spot, and quickly. In some instance I have a game that works perferctly sometimes but other will crash. Cap replacement did not help.

This kind of issue seems pretty common and seems to mostly affect the older SHVC SNES.
I suspect bad S-WRAM, or possibly a fault in the CPU. I will try to swap the S-WRAM and see what happens.

 

Wouldn't mind picking up a couple of these just in case of failure in my SNES, actually... probably won't get easier to find!

 

I havent gotten around to try swapping them yet but I will keep you posted on the results

 

Wish I knew about this earlier! I had a SNES that I was tasked to fix, and the biggest problem was that graphics got really garbled. I got rid of it nonetheless, after spending $10 in parts to initially fix it.

Was this the listing you were talking about: http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Available-new-and-original-IC-chips_705626737.html

 

I did not get the chips on Alibaba no.

Now for some update. I did a transplant and the operation went quite well. My soldering skills are good enough for jobs like that.

However that did not fix my snes. It is misbehaving in exactly the same way as before even with the new ram.
For instance Magic sword will boot and play music until it reaches the start menu. There it will freeze but the music continues. Most other games do not work.
Some like Act raiser show no picture but play the intro music.

Exactly the same as before I did the transplant, the same as before I did the recap.

However this does tell me some things.

It tells me that this problem does not seem to be related to the S-wram.

It tells me that the chips I bought seem to be good chips as I have no deterioration from before.


Here are a couple pictures of the job. I checked every leg for solder bridges, none were found. I am happy with my soldering job. Just a shame the SNES is still not working right. Next suspect : The CPU ? I wish I had a better method to find the fault than Trial and error.

Second picture is the new ram installed.

 

It might be one of the 32kb PSRAM chips connecting to the PPU's? Besides, who made them anyways?

 

PPU chips are SRAM not PSRAM.

APU chips are PSRAM.

CPU do break too.

Use a test cartridge to debug your system. They've been dumped and are quite easy to find on the internet.

 

I had a SNS-CPU-GPM-02 board and the models indicate that its PSRAM.

 

I don't see any indication of PSRAM anywhere onboard.

Anyway, U4 and U5 are the video memories (Goldstar) which are SRAMs. The Hitachi chips (U15/U16) are the PSRAMs and they are for the sound module.

 

Thanks for your suggestion I_oliveira.

I checked on ebay and Burn in cart reproductions do not seem to appear often. There was an original one but this is way too expensive.
I do not have the equipment to make my own repro and I have seen reports of this not working properly on flash cart. Do you know of anyone who could make/sell me a repro of Snes test cart?

 

My bad. Sometimes, other websites can be unreliable -_-

 

Ask TheRealPhoenix to do the reproduction and he's in Canada too.

 

I was going to suggest a reproduction... Yes.

 

Yup contact me Max. I don't have the right PCB for a Burn in cart right know but we can talk about it.

 

can't you just use a flashcart or something for the burn-in rom? or the cart is special ?

 

Nothing special about it. It's a 512KB mode 20 (lo rom) cartridge (like SMW but without the backup memory).

 

I dunno but I think the problem with most flash carts is that they use an interface to boot the rom. The diagnostic cart is to be run on faulty units where the flashcart's interface would likely not work to begin with.
Maybe it would work with some old school flash carts that only boot one rom at a time.

I think a repro is what I need. I will contact TheRealPhoenix and see if something can be worked out about it

Thanks everyone.

 

The burn in cart cart isn't that kind of diagnostic device. It's a collection of tools that are loaded and run like any other cart.