How to test memory in an HP48 RAM card

[rprosperi]

Mark,

You may want to try using PINIT to ensure it behaves the same as a 'normal' card. It should complete w/o errors/messages, but also should not affect any of your data that was already on the card. It's purpose is to initialize all ports that aren't already initialized; so for a brand-new card, it should initialize it, but leave a used one as-is.

Also, a real card will lose its contents if you change the card battery while the card is inserted in a 48GX, if the 48 is not powered-on. For some odd reason, the 48 only provides power to the card while turned-on. If your card does not lose memory when doing this, I suppose it's not necessarily a problem per-se, but you may want to track down why it behaves differently.

As far as further memory testing, make some huge 127KB object, e.g. a list containing the index of a FOR NEXT loop, and save it to the port/card, then add smaller objects until all the RAM is 'used up'. Then recall those smaller objects at the end of port RAM to verify they are intact. If so, the home-made card is probably OK.