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Orchid Ramquet XT/AT RAM Card.

J

jhuyett

Member
Joined
Jan 13, 2017
Messages
34
Location
PA, US
Hello All,
Recently picked up a Orchid Ramquet XT/AT RAM Card in Marketplace.
Advertised as an Orchid Ramquet 8/16, but will still work great for my needs in an IBM AT (5170).
Installed and after 20 minutes of use I started to get errors when running different programs.

I noticed the card gets super hot even after a short amount of time - uncomfortable to touch for more than a few seconds.

Is this normal? And would a memory card of this era require a fan?
It's not surrounded by other cards so airflow should not be the issue.

I don't typically use this computer for more than a few hours at a time, but I'm concerned for both the card and my system if I continue to use.

Regards
 
The errors after a while and heat suggest possible bad ram chips. Check if any of 5hem are hotter than the rest. If so, they are most likely bad. The other possibility would be bad capacitors drawing too much power,
 
Hello KenEG and thanks for the response.
Picture attached for clarity. The area that is hot is in the middle/ right of the card.
ramquest.jpg

The area to the left where the SIMMS are located to the left do not appear to be different than expected in temperature.
Dread the thought of tracking down which capacitor or attempting to replace them all.

Regards
 
A photo of an Orchid RamQuest XT/AT is at [here].

I am not seeing anything on it that I expect to be, "uncomfortable to touch for more than a few seconds."

What more precisely is that hot; a particular chip, or a particular area ?
 
You can try “canned air” when the errors occur. Spray it on each chip in the hot area. If the error goes away, you have found the bad chip.
 
Hello all,
Thanks to all for the suggestions and apologies for the delay.
Unfortunately life got in the way of my making any progress/ updates.

Canned air is a great thought. My issue with this would be I don’t want to run it that hot again. The first time was a mistake in my not knowing there was a problem.
A laser thermometer has been on my list. The need doesn't come up often, but they're cheap enough. Checking Amazon reviews now.

The area of hotness seems to encompass multiple chips - all socket mounted vs soldered directly to the board.
Not sure if this points to capacitors, one bad chip causing the heat across multiple chips, or multiple bad chips.

I hate the thought of buying another card. Most items of this nature are sold as untested as-is so I felt more comfortable that this was tested and working.
I'm feeling "done" spending money on this system. Purchasing another card that possibly doesn't work isn't appealing to me right now.
Will likely keep as-is and just make sure not to run it for long stretches of time.

Again, thanks for the responses.

Regards
 
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