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bad video ram in Zenith Z-100

retrogear

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 29, 2014
Messages
1,125
Location
Minnesota
I was noticing pixelated video in my newly acquired Zenith Z-100. It has a version 2.5 ROM with built in diagnostics. I set it to manual boot and got to the diagnostics test menu by pressing T. Here is the pixelated menu:
rom_diag.jpg
Pressing C generated a color bar pattern which also revealed the problem:
color_diag_bad.jpg
Executing the video memory test revealed a bad memory chip U353:
rom_test.jpg
Subsequent testing showed U347 and U340 also bad. Here is the video board removed and flipped up to reveal the video ram:
video_board.jpg
After ordering and replacing 3 ram chips the stray pixels were gone and the ROM color test pattern looked clean:
color_diag.jpg
After replacing U340 the problem disappeared, so may have been the only bad ram chip? Who knows ... Fun stuff !!

Larry G
 
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