3lectr1cPPC
Well-known member
This one requires a bit of background - I originally posted a thread detailing this issue back around April or May of last year, but then the thread and my account got wiped out completely with last year's crash. I never got a good answer last time, and I'm hoping that I can get to the bottom of this problem this time around.
Back to 2018 - I just got my Clamshell lot in from eBay, my first real vintage mac purchase. I had gotten a free eMac earlier on, but that was it. The lot contained a working Tangerine, and a metric ton of Blueberry parts. I had 2 logic boards. One worked fine, and I was able to assemble a full working unit with it and other pieces, but the other had a really strange issue. It turned on and would boot fine from CD-ROM, but it wouldn't seem to power any hard drive I installed, it simply wouldn't spin up no matter what I did. At the time I just assumed that something died. After all, stuff like that happens sometimes.
Then it happened again!
Fast forward to around April 2021, I have my Tangerine apart to upgrade the hard drive. I'd taken apart these enough at this point that it was no challenge whatsoever. I got the drive installed and the computer reassembled. I tried to start it, but I got no chime and no power. I unplugged it and that's when I smelled that oh-so-well known smell of "electronic smoke", aka the smell a computer board lets out when something just blew. I took the whole thing apart again, but I couldn't find the source of the smell. Nothing looked blown. I did another test at this point and it started up, but it now had the same issue that the other blueberry board did. No hard drive power.
One is just bad luck, but two? So, what's going on here. Best case scenario, something shorted and blew a fuse. But where is that fuse? I'm no expert in what SMD fuses look like, but I can't seem to find any. When I got the 2nd board out of the bottom plastic case, the bad smell came more strongly from the back of the board, near where the hard drive is mounted.
Here's another thing I noticed:
One of the boards is missing a tantalum cap, clearly having been ripped off! If the board missing it had the issue and the one with it didn't, I've found my issue. But both boards have the issue, so I'm inclined to believe that the cap is not the cause of the problem, at least I assume not. It's also not all that close to the hard drive area of the board. The cap also isn't shorted to ground on the board where it is present.
That pretty much exhausts my troubleshooting abilities. Does anyone else have any ideas? My Blueberry clamshell's board has been getting rather flaky lately, and it would be nice to get these 2 back into service again. Does anyone know what pins of the IDE connector carry the power for the drive motor?
3lectr1c
Back to 2018 - I just got my Clamshell lot in from eBay, my first real vintage mac purchase. I had gotten a free eMac earlier on, but that was it. The lot contained a working Tangerine, and a metric ton of Blueberry parts. I had 2 logic boards. One worked fine, and I was able to assemble a full working unit with it and other pieces, but the other had a really strange issue. It turned on and would boot fine from CD-ROM, but it wouldn't seem to power any hard drive I installed, it simply wouldn't spin up no matter what I did. At the time I just assumed that something died. After all, stuff like that happens sometimes.
Then it happened again!
Fast forward to around April 2021, I have my Tangerine apart to upgrade the hard drive. I'd taken apart these enough at this point that it was no challenge whatsoever. I got the drive installed and the computer reassembled. I tried to start it, but I got no chime and no power. I unplugged it and that's when I smelled that oh-so-well known smell of "electronic smoke", aka the smell a computer board lets out when something just blew. I took the whole thing apart again, but I couldn't find the source of the smell. Nothing looked blown. I did another test at this point and it started up, but it now had the same issue that the other blueberry board did. No hard drive power.
One is just bad luck, but two? So, what's going on here. Best case scenario, something shorted and blew a fuse. But where is that fuse? I'm no expert in what SMD fuses look like, but I can't seem to find any. When I got the 2nd board out of the bottom plastic case, the bad smell came more strongly from the back of the board, near where the hard drive is mounted.
Here's another thing I noticed:
One of the boards is missing a tantalum cap, clearly having been ripped off! If the board missing it had the issue and the one with it didn't, I've found my issue. But both boards have the issue, so I'm inclined to believe that the cap is not the cause of the problem, at least I assume not. It's also not all that close to the hard drive area of the board. The cap also isn't shorted to ground on the board where it is present.
That pretty much exhausts my troubleshooting abilities. Does anyone else have any ideas? My Blueberry clamshell's board has been getting rather flaky lately, and it would be nice to get these 2 back into service again. Does anyone know what pins of the IDE connector carry the power for the drive motor?
3lectr1c