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The Memory Conspiracy!

 
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Mystic_Merlin



Joined: 15 Oct 2007
Posts: 533
Location: Bangkok

PostPosted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 6:25 pm    Post subject: The Memory Conspiracy! Reply with quote

Ok so we all know that apart from the specific Bung series, most memory boards on copiers present the same way: dual row 40 pins or 50 pins.

Here are some different layouts:

On the left we have the most common layouts seen on Pro Fighters' first series. Actually the one with the HC138 was less used and I never noticed improvement over the regular design.

For the 50 pins series, mostly used in second generation Pro Fighters I've seen quite a few different ones and so far I thought they were all the same, only in different packages until I noticed something...

If I put any of these 3 boards in a PFX1, a Turbo Fighter or anything with this kind of interface:

Only the board at the top with the ZIP packages will be recognized and identified as 32M.
My first thought: the PFX1 can only see the first memory bank, only later bios shall address up to 64M and see the 32M whatever bank is used...anybody can confirm that?

If we follow the evolution of the Pro Fighter family excluding DPF, there was in order (plz correct if anything wrong):
- The Super Pro Fighter (up to 16M)
- The Pro Fighter Q/Q+ (up to 32M)
- The Pro Fighter X (up to 32M)
- The Pro Fighter X 2 Turbo (up to 64M + GB smart card)
- The Pro Fighter X 2 Turbo 3in1 (up to 64M + GB/GG smart card + CD ROM)

Only the first 2 are using 40 pins memory board and the classic square case. The rest are using the casing of the Double Pro Fighter with a 50 pins memory board.

As it was not complicate enough, here comes some hybrid bastard Laughing

The Super Pro Fighter X!
The same as the PFX1/Turbo Fighter pictured on the left, only in a SPFQ casing.
In this ocean of copiers it's hard to tell which is a copy and which is not but I can most certainly say this one was not an original CCL product.

First I thought it was just a bios upgrade of a SPFQ but then I realized switching its BIOS with my FX-32 wouldn't work both ways: although they have the exact same boards, the SPFX can run with a FX-32 BIOS but the FX-32 just display garbage with a SPFX bios.
The reason? While the BIOS used on this pcb layout is usually 256 bytes, the SPFX one is 512 bytes and I guess some logic chips must have been modified to access all the memory.
Not only that but to come back to the main topic it seems unable to use regular 40 pins memory boards, it always display 0M... The pcb is very clean, I tested continuity everywhere so I doubt there's any physical issue.
I'm really curious to figure out what was the original memory board used on this one and how the modifications impacted on its way to access it.
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