The Sinclair QL Forum

Greeting.
While my ql +Gold Card working doing heavy math calculations the operation failed.
I have attached screen fotos.
I remove the gold card and ql works fine.
I have removed and cleared two removable chips from Gold card, but after a while the system crashed again.
Any help?
Is it possible the gold card be repaird and by whom!!!

Those horrid zig-zag socketed RAM chips have been known to be troublesome.

Silvester wrote:Those horrid zig-zag socketed RAM chips have been known to be troublesome.

Yep. Main failure cause for original Gold Cards. When the card heats up and cools down, the SIPs tend to work themselves loose from the sockets (There's a reason why the SIP technology aera only lasted about a year...). I've also had broken legs before.

If you dare to do difficile work, you can pull all the SIPs from the sockets, clean everything carefully, straighten the pins with some fine pliers, put a bit of contact cleaner in the sockets, and re-assemble.

Another cause of failure on original Gold Cards that I've had before was broken solder joints on the card itself. Re-flowing the whole board will repair this.

Is that a smear of thermal paste on the CPU? Some thermal paste is also electrically conductive and it may be making a very slight short between pins? But also, SIP RAM is the likeliest cause as others have said.

SIP, isn't it ZIP package ? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zig-zag_in-line_package)

Silvester wrote:SIP, isn't it ZIP package ? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zig-zag_in-line_package)

Could well be, thanks. (I don't care so much - both are crap when used with sockets)

Silvester wrote:SIP, isn't it ZIP package ? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zig-zag_in-line_package)

SIP are "Single Inline Packeges" mostly used for single row resistor arrays.

Another issue I have experienced was the PLCC socket of the CPU. When the chip is pressed in, the socket tends to bend out of shape at the left and the top. (This is because the sockets for the PLD and the floppy controller at the right and the bottom hold it firmly from those sides. All elastic deformation goes to the left and the top.)

As a consequence, the pins in the middle of the left and upper row have poor contact. Removing, cleaning, and re-socketing helps, but only temporarily in my case. In my experience, PLCC sockets are a almost as unreliable as ZIP sockets.

Update: I have a red Gold Card - just noticed the yellow Gold Card has PLCC socket locations with some distance, so it is not an issue there. Also the sockets I see on the picture look less elastic than the ones on my red Gold Card.

tofro wrote:

Silvester wrote:SIP, isn't it ZIP package ? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zig-zag_in-line_package)

Could well be, thanks. (I don't care so much - both are crap when used with sockets)

I'm surprised Miracle didn't just solder them in place (though I have a QXL with half sockets empty).

Hi,

This type of ram in the Gold Card, Super Gold Card, QXL is called zig-zag in-line package (ZIP). Some Amiga accelerator board use Zip Ram in sockets, so it is a viable thing to do.

If I remember correctly, the Gold Card was given away from Miracle to another QL Trader, not sure it was, but Qbranch were involved.

If this correct then Qbranch badly built the Q40 with low quality components, the ISA sockets broke when inserting an ISA Card. The Video Memory which the same package format as the Super/Gold Card, QXL was in sockets.

I built the Q60 with the ZIP video ram soldered to the board, the board the sockets seemed a potential failure point.

As a result all Q60 boards were constructed without any failures.

There was however failures due user intervention, after removal of the CPU heatsink to look at the CPU serial number. This was detailed in QL Today, who never contacted me to establish if this was correct.