My Sam440ep seems to be broken gfx/gfxram

Today after i turned on my sam440ep i got many pixels shown in the uboot-screen and everywhere. It seems after 4 Years my Videoram or my onboard Radeon M9 is broken

I try to fix that tomorrow in our company, testing PSU, all voltages, Videoram-Joints, M9-Joints. I hope i can fix it.




If i couldn't fix it i must use a pci-card.

Have anyone here a working setup and can recommend a pci-graphic-card for sam440ep?

@fingus

If it's the M9 that failed and your board is beyond warranty then you might have a hard time getting it fixed. At least ACube still haven't fixed mine, and it's been some year now (I bought a new board in the meantime).

The best gfx card for the Sam440ep is an ATI Radeon 9250.

@trixie Quote:
ACube have had your Sam440 for a year?!?

A year??? That's shocking!!

Turning a whole year next week, yes. But note that this is an out-of-warranty repair - ACube never promised me they would be able to fix it. Thanks to the kind Steven Solie I got an affordable replacement so I stopped being after it - though I'd still prefer getting the board fixed, to have a spare machine for development when I'm away from home.

Indeed your board repair history is very long:

1 - the assembly facility were moving to a new place

2 - we tried to reflow the gfx chip, but this didn't worked

3 - then we didn't find M9 replacement chips from a reliable source quickly

4 - when finally the M9 chips arrived, there was the earthquake where the assembly facility is located

We hope to have the board repaired "soon", now that all the pieces are at their places...

@m3x

As I say, I don't hold any grudge towards ACube because I know it's not your fault. Please keep trying to repair my board, I'll gladly pay for the fix.

I decided not to repair my SAM440EP, because that could render the motherboard completely death. I ordered today a ATI Radeon 9250 PCI and hope that it works.

What i did already:

- Changing UBoot-Prefs to PCI as Primary Output

What to do then when the PCI-Card arrives here?

- Comment out Radeon.chip in Kickstart-layout (Is it only for onboard M9 or what?)?
- Remobe Radeon-Monitor from DEVS:Monitor?
- Add PCI-Graphics to Devs:Monitors?

If thats not working i sadly have to bought a SAM460ex, maybe A-Cube can make a special offer, when sending my SAM440ep back?

@fingus

Sad story, good luck for you Sam, i hope you can find a way to repair it !

@fingus

Quote:
Don't do that! The ATIRadeon.chip is apparently not only for the M9 but for all supported Radeon cards.

Quote:
No, don't remove that.

Quote:
No, I don't have anything like that in my DEVS:Monitors, and I use the Radeon 9250 card in my system happily.

Hello folks. Sorry for ressurecting the ancient topic, but I got the very same problem.

It seems that after so many years of stable and faithful working, my Sam 440EP broke.

The board is this: http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=1

I get corrupted image on the screen. Checked with different monitors, cables and dvi to vga adapters, same result.

I wrote to Acube, sending some photos as well. They said that the problem could most likely be the VRAM of the on board M9 Radeon graphics chip. They also spotted the main RAM module but it seems that the M9 chip is the problem.

They also pointed that they do not have replacement chips any more so they probably would not be able to fix the board.

So my first question is:

Does anyone knows the exact details of the M9 chip that is used on Sam 440EP. I am thinking of trying to locate one online. Any recommended places to check?

Second question:

If I would use a PCI graphics card what is the recommended one? On some other topics / forums I read about the Radeon 9250. But there is this sticker on the PCI slot pointing that I should not use 5.5Volts or 5Volts PCI cards on there. So what is the correct voltage number I should go for? I believe 3.3 right? But how I would identify that the card that I would buy carries the correct voltage? Any link / example featuring the right card would be great.

Has anyone run through a similar problem?
How it was solved?

Ps. On another topic I have read that the Acube guys, tried to reflow the chip on nother board with the same prob. That was prior to the chip replacement they did. Reflowing the chip did not fix the problem.

I will wait for your replies.

Thanks

Hi

NEW Chip ATI Mobility 9000 M9-CSP64 (216T9NGBGA13FHG):

https://allegrolokalnie.pl/oferta/chip ... -m9-csp64-216t9ngbga13fhg

https://allegrolokalnie.pl/oferta/ati-m9-csp64-216t9nfbga13fh

Quote:

Thanks for this one, is there any site that uses English language and still sells that chip?

I do not know Polish lol, or at least if someone can help me with the order from there...

@amiga_os - Are you from Poland? Can you help a little with this? Thanks!

@Morpheus

I sent You a PM message.

@amig_os

Thanks a lot Sir!

I replied!