A question from a Newbie

[Adistar]

Hello one and all, I have a question I hope you can help me with, I have recently acquired a PC-FX with Zenki, Chip Chan, Zeroigar, Battle Heat and Tengai, but it appears to have a problem with the internal memory, I'm sure it is faulty, everytime I go to start a game the same message appears, in Japanese of course, the only English words are RAM, and start, it must be along the lines of your internal Ram does not work, press start to continue without saving.

 I have been into the menu and formatted both the internal memory and the BMP, both menus are blank.

 The problem means that certain games that I have bought since just don't work, Team innocent does not get past the run screen, the screen goes blank and then nothing happens and First kiss story just plays a message and quits back to the system menu.

 Has anybody here encountered this problem, I have tentatively opened the console up, but I have no clue what I am looking for, plus I do not want to disassemble it, as it seems to be very hard to do.

Any help you may have will be gratefully received.

[Arkhan]

can you take pictures of the screens that appear?  I've never run into any error screens!  Its possible maybe it didn't format?   

btw, how much did your setup cost you anyway?  You got the expensive games already!

[Tatsujin]

i'm very sure and w/o seeing the screen, but i'm certainly sure that this message tries to inform you about your internal RAM which has to be initialized first or just is plain full -> erase some data first so that you can play the games.

[nat]

I think he said he already formatted his memory, and it is completely empty.

[Arkhan]

I think he said he already formatted his memory, and it is completely empty.

yeah.   I wonder if hes getting some error screen noones seen before?  Are there system error screens or anything like that?

[Tatsujin]

I think he said he already formatted his memory, and it is completely empty.

lol.. those who can read are king

[Adistar]

Hello again

              Many thanks for your replies, most appreciated, to Arkhan, the system initially cost me £299 with Zenki, Chip Chan, First kiss and Battle heat, Zenki has a badly faded spine, so that seems to have knocked a few quid off.

 I then ordered Zeroigar and Tengai for £170 and £45, and finally Team Inncocent for just £12, with that outlay it is a bit troubling to be encountering problems, I have not bothered with the machine before, sticking to my PC engine collection, but the machine and games seemed a good deal, all except Team innocent and First kiss play absolutely fine, but none save anything to the machine.

 The format message appears to be the same for the internal memory and the BMP, what they say I have not a clue, but there does not seem to be a problem formatting either.

 I have taken three pictures of the screens for Chip Chan, Zeroigar and First kiss. I have attached them, hope I've done it right!!

[Tatsujin]

as I just thought, there isn't nuff RAM available. therefore RAM must be cleard that the game can be saved.

[OldSchoolGamer]

OBEY le Tats!

[Adistar]

Hi Tatsujin

              There is nothing in the RAM at all, it is totally blank, no game data is listed, I have photographed it, along with the formatting screens, I format the memory, but it makes no difference, the previous messages still come up, Team innocent fails to load etc.

[Arkhan]

man! You paid a ton for those games!  >_< I was hoping maybe you got them for a steal!


Hmm, your problem is strange.  Very strange.  Gonna need a PC-FX internals specialist to fix it.

Maybe the internal BRAM battery is dead?

[Adistar]

man! You paid a ton for those games!  >_< I was hoping maybe you got them for a steal!


Hmm, your problem is strange.  Very strange.  Gonna need a PC-FX internals specialist to fix it.

Maybe the internal BRAM battery is dead?

 Here in England it seems to be an expensive console to collect for, Zenki is only on sale on a couple of sites and is going for £250-£280, Chip chan is around £80-£150,
and Zeroigar I have only seen on sale once and I snapped it up while I could.

 The machine goes for around £100 to £150 depending on condition.

One of the reasons I have never gone for one until now is the price of the games.

 The problem is very strange and annoying, If there is a battery on the board that does give me some hope, if it is down to faulty capacitors or something along those lines I am rubbish with a soldering iron!

 I have even tried leaving it on for a few hours to see if it charged something up, but it didn't.

[Arkhan]

you could attempt to dis assemble the unit yourself and see if theres a battery on the board , but if you're not patient/good at reassembling weird stuff, you might want to hold off til someone confirms that there is a battery on there.

[Tatsujin]

Hi Tatsujin

              There is nothing in the RAM at all, it is totally blank, no game data is listed, I have photographed it, along with the formatting screens, I format the memory, but it makes no difference, the previous messages still come up, Team innocent fails to load etc.

Adistar, what you did was completely right. you initialized the RAM which then deleted all backup files succesfully. so at that point i can't help anymore. as already stated from arkhan, it seems to have  a problem with the FX ram/management.

but normally the battery should have no effect as long the device is powered

[Arkhan]

but normally the battery should have no effect as long the device is powered

yeah... this is true, it should at least be able to start a game and create save data, and then just lose the data upon power off.


Hmmmmm