At 09:20 -0800 11/30/09, Ivan X wrote:
>However, when I have the board in, there's an irritating high-pitched
>whine from the speaker. It isn't on for a couple of seconds during
>power up, but then it cuts in -- it appears to be related to the
>display. In fact, if I change the resolution of the display (you can
>set 560x384 if you have an Apple IIe card), the pitch of the whine
>changes. Likewise, if I let the screen turn off (from the Screen
>control panel), the whine goes away.
>
>When I use the original board, no whine.
>

What you describe is almost surely leakage from the horizontal deflection coils 
of the CRT monitor into the audio circuitry on the motherboard.

It's possible that the magnetic field is exciting a vibration in some metallic 
element that is not the speaker but when you mention that it goes away with the 
old mother board that becomes unlikely.

The analog board supplies power to the motherboard at +12, +5, and, I think -5 
volts. It's possible that some of the horizontal drive signal is showing up on 
one of those wires and being coupled into the audio driver.

Marginal filter capacitors on those power lines are a real possibility. There 
is a lot of information around on cleaning boards and replacing capacitors for 
older Mac 128 through SE/30's I don't know about the more modern classics but 
if the board has those aluminum electrolytics on it - the usually blue round 
cans that stand up fairly high - it's worth consideration.

It's also possible that the analog board has weak components. The flyback 
transformer has been implicated on older "classics". If so a somewhat higher 
power usage on the new board may be stretching the current (two meanings there, 
both appropriate) capability of the analog board. Increasing  the load on the 
power supply, like adding a IIe card, would be expected to make the symptoms 
worse.

An oscilloscope looking at the power wires between analog and motherboard would 
answer a lot of questions but not everyone has that kind of equipment. Perhaps 
a friend who's a ham radio operator? A voltage check with a good meter might 
help. The +5 volts needs to be accurate. The others have a lot of tolerance.

And. Your description of the problem is excellent. I wish others would pay that 
much attention to details. One other check you could make is to see if the 
whine shows up in headphones.


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