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Re: CRASH! [message #12230] Sun, 12 August 2012 23:38
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!cmcl2!philabs!sdcsvax!sdccsu3!sdcva x!bmcg!rasp

<pre>Article-I.D.: bmcg.209
Posted: Wed Feb 9 18:41:35 1983
Received: Sat Feb 12 06:57:08 1983
References: utzoo.2788 uwvax.743



Here is some accumulated lore about crashes and glitches on the
ATARI:

1. When you clean the contacts, clean all of the contacts!
This includes CAREFULLY removing the ROMs from their
sockets, GENTLY erasing oxidation from the pins, and
reseating them.

2. When you use an eraser to clean off the contacts, be
VERY gentle. The precious-metal coating is extremely thin;
and, when that gets rubbed off you're in for a lot of
oxidation problems.

3. As a rule of thumb, with gold-to-gold conections, the
problem won't be oxidation... just accumulated dirt. The
clean-up period for this should be on the order of months.
For gold to silver there is a mild oxidation problem that
could require clean-up on a one or two month basis. If it
is gold-or-silver to something else, like German silver or
solder, the service interval may be days or weeks depending
upon ambient temperature and atmospheric contaminants; e.g.,
if you live near a paper mill or a rubber plant with the
resulting corrosive atmosphere you have got a real problem.

4. One other bit of unpleasantness is that some alternate
sources for add-in memories had a problem EXECUTING code
out of high memory. It turns out that the 6502 makes
adjacent accesses to memory when fetching code while it
makes less frequent access to memory on data fetches.
This means that a memory test that only accesses data in
memory won't detect the problem. What is needed is a test
that moves a piece of relocatable code through the area
under test and executes it. The only problem there is
that it won't pick up pattern sensitivities. Oh well!
The nice part about it is that the manufacturers own up to
the problem when asked, and their warranties are still in
effect.

5. Still another little mystery is the misbehavior of the
system if you fool around with the joystick at inopportune
times; e.g. during disk accesses, etc. I'm not entirely
pleased with the explanation; but, it could be an electro-
magnetic interference problem. Solutions are to avoid
keeping your computer in a room with nylon carpets (static
build-up) or any other insulating material. Of course, as
far as diddling with the joystick while accessing the disk
goes, it's simply a case of: "Doctor, it hurts when I do
this." ... " So, don't do this!"

Good luck with your machines.

Ron Perloff
Burroughs
Micro Components Group
PO Box 28810
San Diego, CA 92127
(619) 451-4519

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