Yo compacters everywhere,
I received three spare Classic II motherboards. In a working Classic II, I spent an
evening testing them. None of the three worked at all. I noticed a peculiar staining
on each of these boards. In each case, it looked like a couple of splotches of Dr.
Pepper or something sticky frequently spilled by Macheads. More peculiar is that the
staining was in exactly the same couple of spots on each of the three boards. A close
look at these spots showed they were spotted in and about two clusters of capacitors
on the boards. From my readings, I am aware that our ancient Macs are getting to the
age where capacitors begin to leak their vile and evil corrosive fluids onto their
motherboard. These three spare boards came in an anti-static bag marked "discard"
which explained nothing but did not bode well. My readings tell me that some have had
success by a very careful cleaning about the capacitors using alcohol and cotton
swabs. About a hundred swabs later, I have three spotless boards!
. I also cleaned the same spots found on the functioning motherboard from the Classic
II. That the board from the Classic II was working gave me hope while suggesting this
spotting had nothing to do with these three spare boards not working. A case of sixes
I tell ya.
After the cleaning, I cleaned 'em again. A lot of swabs gave their all here but we
have CLEAN! The board from the Classic II still works fine so I feel as if I haven't
hurt anything. Of the three, one now works perfect, one works less than perfect. and
the third still doesn't work at all. The one that works is ready to go back into life
inside another Mac. Let me tell you about these other two.
The one that doesn't work at all doesn't work at all. You pphongg the Mac into life,
the screen raster comes on. And NOTHING! No cursor in the corner. No happy Mac. No
questioning floppy. No sad Mac. NOTHING! Change the battery, change the RAM, zap the
PRAM: NOTHING! Could be this is why the bag said "discard". Dumpster city.
The one that works less than perfect is interesting. My testing Classic II is
configured 6/160 running MacOS 7.6.1. Any combination of 1, 2, or 4 MB RAM SIMMs runs
just fine with several other boards. Being short of 4 MB SIMMs at the moment, I have 2
MB SIMMs installed for 6 MB RAM total. The init/cdev ladened System Folder on the
startup drive was booting just fine through several motherboards and several sets of
RAM I was testing. Working fine that is until this board which doesn't work fine. And
several sets of proven good 2 MB RAM SIMMs do exactly the same thing in this board.
This board boots along just fine marching the inits/cdevs in without issue until the
alphabetically last and HUGE Virex 6.1 hits it. All other boards and RAM had no issue.
At this point on the good boards, maybe 2500k of the 6 MB were showing as available.
Virex asked for more than that. The board arbitrated among the several needs and
loaded Virex. No issue. March complete. Desktop builds. Mac works. This one bad board,
and only this one board, and this board with any known good sets of 2 MB RAM, marches
in the inits/cdevs just fine until it hits that big hunk o' Virex. Then it stops. No
crash; just stops. A freeze really. I fussed with swapping in several sets of 2 MB
RAM. Same thing. I fuss with inits and cdevs. If the total System Folder load is less
than 6 MB; no problem with this bad board. On other good boards, if the System Folder
load is over 6 MB, then the board arbitrates and adjusts the share each piece gets and
finishes the boot without issue. With this bad boar!
d, whatever init/cdev exceeds the 6 MB available, the board arbitrates nothing. It
just stops.
There is not much you can do on a Classic II motherboard. I will clean and test it
again. Whatever on this bad board that does the RAM arbitrating has likely stopped.
This board is likely headed to the dumpster to fulfill the "discard" instruction of
its container.
Bill
--
Compact Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/>.
Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html>
Compact Macs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/compact.shtml>
The FAQ: <http://macfaq.org/>
--> AOL users, remove "mailto:";
Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/compact.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/>
---------------------------------------------------------------
>The Think Different Store
http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com
---------------------------------------------------------------
