IFU Backup Memory corrupted?

[elartur77]

I got this PC Engine/CDROM2/IFU combo, but the memory backup in the IFU seem to be corrupted, the images are from the memory manager, all the texts has this lines over, when I try to format it does nothing.

HuCard games works great but games that uses the Backup memory cant save, doesnt detect it, the CDRom games doesnt work at all, the disk dont spin at all and after a little while just got "please set disk".

I know the PC Engine and CDROM2 works fine because they work flawlesly on another IFU I have.

I try with a TenoKoe Bank but it says that doesnt find any memory backup at all!

Then I use the BRAM TOOL and all I got was this "BRAM IS NOT PRESENT", so I replaced the supercapacitor but still the same. Its possible that the BRAM chip got corrupted?

I dont know if doing the FRAM mod will solve my problem, I dont want to mess with it because I think is way over my soldering skills.

So does someone had an idea whats wrong with it and how to solve it?

Thanks!

[Keith Courage]

That's probably bad ram. Not the actual save ram. This is the ram that's used to load data into in order for games to run. This is why none of your CD games will boot.

If the problem was just the actual save memory, then games would still load and run fine. You just wouldn't be able to save anything successfully.

There are two identical ram chips on the small removal board. One of the two chips is probably bad. Unfortunately, depending on the chips that are in there, some of these can only be sourced from other ifu docking stations.

So depending on the cost for buying another already working correctly docking station, it might make it pointless cost wise to buy another one to use for parts.

There are different revisions of the ifu docking station. So not all of them have the exact same upper board and same RAM chips on it. Meaning, not all of them are interchangeable.

This problem is most definitely not bad capacitors. So it would be a waste of time and money to change the capacitors out thinking it would fix the problem.

[elartur77]

Thank you very much for your reply!

This info helps a lot, it makes sense your explanation about the ram, so its not worth it to repair this unit, they are not that expensive either so better get another one.

If I could get those ram chips at a reasonable price maybe could be viable for repair.

Anyway, thankyou very much again.

[Tak-MK]

It's already answered, but I wanted to add too that in my experience that's because of a VRAM IC, at least everytime I get that in any other console it's 99% related to some VRAM failing, but sadly I never changed one in an IFU.
Good luck!