Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

I have an mp7 which is faulty [fails to boot].

Sometimes it shows nothing on the lcd, while at other times it shows '._"

From this I guess that it has completed the first system test but hung on the second. Does anyone have access to a TSM (or other information source) and can describe the tests that are being undertaken with each dot so I can identify what the problem might be? I'm further guessing that the first test is likely to be the SDRAM and that this situation indicates an SDRAM fault.

The dots are simply a poor-man's progress bar.  When you see dots, it's 
decompressing the firmware from flash into RAM.  They're not self-tests.  If it 
doesn't succeed, I'd guess bad RAM (or flash, or CPU, or solder joints...)  If 
you boot into diagnostics, does it make it there?  You could then run the tests. 
 IIRC, the tests are in the boot loader so it shouldn't have to decompress the 
main OS image.

-Aaron


----- Original Message ----
From: woodsworth1 <woodsworth1@...>
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, December 7, 2010 4:46:05 PM
Subject: [xl7] boot loader tests

I have an mp7 which is faulty [fails to boot].

Sometimes it shows nothing on the lcd, while at other times it shows '._"

From this I guess that it has completed the first system test but hung on the 
second. Does anyone have access to a TSM (or other information source) and can 
describe the tests that are being undertaken with each dot so I can identify 
what the problem might be? I'm further guessing that the first test is likely to 
be the SDRAM and that this situation indicates an SDRAM fault.