Schlagwort: DRAM

Small testrig for old DRAM 64kx4 Chips

I bought some old DRAM Chips from Ebay for the repair of an Amiga, so i looked for a way to test those chips to know if they are in working order before putting them in the board. There are some chip testers available on the market but i thought i could build one myself and maybe use it for testing other kinds of chips later by expanding on the code.

So here is my first try on a chip tester for TMS4464 / NEC 41464 and other compatible chips, those are 64k x 4 Bit organised, DIL18 case. I had some Teensy 3.2 and a 24 pin ZIF Socket in my storage, so i did a quick layout and etched a pcb. The schematic is quite simple, each connection of the ZIF Socket is connected to some header pins and the GPIOs of a Teensy 3.2 (since the Teensy is 5V tolerant), additionally i added 3 pins with GND, 5V and 3,3V to supply power to the chip with some jumper wires. Since i wanted it as versatile as possible you have to use the jumpers, but be carefull, the Ram chips have GND and VCC exchanged compared to 74xx TTL Chips. I recommend reading the datasheet of a chip before connecting it. Sadly i had no easy accessible GPIOs left to make the powersupply for the chip switchable in software, so i always have to power down the teensy to change chips, nobody is perfect. :)

The first firmware can test the Databus, Adressbus and the complete Memory for errors.

And yes, that is a 7404 in the picture, i tried my pcb on a cheap chip first before trying on out of production drams.

Have fun! Please leave a comment if you build one yourself, have suggestions or improvements on the source.