I just booted my firepower II up after moving last month. When I did, magic smoke started coming out if the pinitech NVRAM module I had installed. Specifically the small chip on the underside of the NVRAM module was toast. Any idea what could have cause this? No other obvious damage, when it first booted it seemed fine. Burned up after about 30 seconds of being on. What should I check before installing new ram and booting again?

thanks, I saw the note on his website. I shot him an email but don't expect a response til he returns.

Thanks for the replies. I'll check the voltage with no chip in there, im not sure if i still have the original ram kicking around but ill look. No chance it was backwards though, it was working for a long time before the failure.

Update: I got a new NVRAM chip from Wayne. I pulled all the boards, searched for any obvious shorts or damage, found none, cleaned them and blew them off with an air compressor in case of metal dust short, put it all back together and measured the voltage at pin 22 of the empty socket with the game on. The reading stabilized at ~4.9v and then remained stable over some time, and a few reboots just to make sure. Later after much multimeter poking I installed the new NVRAM module. The game fired up after a reboot and now plays fine again. No idea what caused the issue. Maybe Wayne will be able to find something after he receives the burned up chip.