LAMBDA PC 8300 BLACK DISPLAY

[crowded]

Hi members,
i have newly bought a lambda pc 8300 computer but unfortunately when i put the power jack of 12 V to the computer socket the red light turns on and a beep sound heard but only black display there is no cursor. i compared the motherboard i have with some pc 8300 motherboards on the net and realised that there are four 2114 ram chip slots on the board but there is none of them. i want to know if there should be those chips on the board to have it work properly.

[mrtinb]

Not many people have these machines, so not many answers. (Mine is non-working stowed away, gives only black screen.)

Looking at this http://www.museo8bits.com/lambda.htm it looks like either there is 4 small chip OR 1 big.

[mrtinb]

I found mine in the bottom of my closet.



The boards look different. I have 4 small chips as well, but not the vertical one.

[gozzo]

those are ram 'options' either one big 2k 8bit (6116 or similar) or 4 1k 4bit (2114 or similar) , to make 2k ram...depends on what they could get at the time i suppose!

[mrtinb]

Usually the chip that stops working is the ULA (here C4005).

Unfortunately these are custom made chips. And this version is custom made for the Lambda 8300.

I was hoping in the future to create a ULA clone for the ZX81 in a CPLD, and when that is working, maybe modify it to work on the Lambda 8300. The custom ULA in the Lambda 8300 includes a ROM with the characters as well (and not like the ZX81, where the characters are stored in the BASIC ROM).

[TMAOne]

I have a working one, but I do have to fiddle with the brightness and contrast controls on my period black & white TV to see the READY prompt and the cursor. The beep sounds right, like the machine is booting. Maybe just a video problem? Have you tried the monitor output?

HPIM1402.JPG

(2.26 MiB) Downloaded 1044 times

[crowded]

i have not checked from monitor output yet. i will try as soon as possible. Thanks