A Tale of IIfx Boards

[Von]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Years ago I got this board for the IIfx ROM in one of my SE/30's. It was only the board and I didn't know if it worked.



I'll refer to this as Board 1.  I wanted get this running so I bought a complete non-working IIfx earlier this year...this is Board 2.

Board 2 came with:

- 8 sticks of RAM that appear to be the same however I don't know how big each stick is

- a NuBus video card that works when tested in my IIci

- its speaker works when tested in my IIci

- it has a broken battery tray on one of the batteries on the + side

Here is want Board 2 looks like on the bench with 4 of the RAM sticks in Bank A:

For the hard drive I have an Adtron SSD that has a Universal 7.0.1 install on it.

Here is the broken battery tray:

And the battery tray with a piece of metal making contact to the board so it should be providing power:

When I used its power button that is missing the button part, nothing happens. Same for when I use the keyboard power On...  It was the worst of times...

Here is Board 1 with 4 of the RAM sticks from Board 2 in BANK A and all of the other components from Board 2:

In this setup I removed the Spectrum Eng card from the ROM slot and used the ROM from Board 2.  For the hard drive I have the same Adtron SSD that has a Universal 7.0.1 install on it.

When I hit the power button or keyboard power button, the power supply fires up as I can hear its fan. This is good as it appears the PS is working as is power on on this board. Unfortunately:

- I get no chime from the known working speaker

- I get no video from the know working video card

- I get no blinking from the SSD LED

Again we have the worst of times...

I do not have the black SCSI terminator however per the linked post, that sounds like it is not required.  I very likely could be dealing with bad caps on both boards with Board 2 being in slightly better shape in that it at least fires up the power supply.

I have not yet tried one of my other 2 IIfx ROMs to see if that might be the problem (Board 2's ROM is dead).  

Can anyone suggest anything else to try here?  For instance, does the video card need to be in a different slot?

Many thanks!

 

[AwkwardPotato]

Some observations:

Board 2 has some pretty bad cap damage, most notably around the 8530 chip and Serial PIC. There also looks to be some slight battery leakage right around the RAM chip between the two battery holders. Not entirely sure about this one, but it sort of looks like the two electrolytics on that board were already replaced; the soldering work doesn't look factory (again, not sure though). All of the components around and including C9 are important to the power-on circuit, and a lot of them look really corroded (Q1, R3, R4, R5, etc). Several crusty vias as well. Definitely give this board a wash to get the battery and capacitor crap off.

Board 1 doesn't appear to have much, if any visible damage. Test the voltages on the power supply just to rule that out as being an issue, and make sure your ROM is good.

 

[Von]

Here is my update...

Board 1 got a working IIfx ROM installed and when powered on, no chime or video.

I checked the PS and got:

5 Reds: 5.13

1 Yellow: 12.14

1 Blue: -12.11

1 White: 4.23

For fun I moved the outermost NuBus slot to the innermost slot and no joy.

Any other suggestions on this board?  I will likely be sending this one to AllMacs for caps.

THx