BlueSCSI troubleshooting

[Andrew18489]

Does anyone know what’s wrong with this BlueSCSI? It disables the mouse and floppy drive whenever I plug it in.

 

[chiptripper]

One of those resistor arrays looks two pins short, I'd start there. Also I'd check the SD card holder for solder bridges.

 

[Andrew18489]

Is the wrong resistor all together on there? I had to get a few replacements at some point.

 

[chiptripper]

Yeah AFAIK you need four 10 pin arrays, two 220s and two 330s. Also, not sure if it would affect functionality or not, but there are typically two jumpers on the bluepill itself.

 

[Andrew18489]

I read something about termination. Is mine terminated? Does it need to be?

 

[chiptripper]

Right now you've got it terminated (with those two black jumpers), which is what you want if your device is the only one plugged in, or at the end of the SCSI chain.

 

[Daniël]

That SD card slot looks absolutely globbed with solder. I would strongly suspect poor assembly quality is causing the issues described.

 

[Torbar]

The termination will not be working right since one of the resistor nets(used for termination) is too small, and is likely at least part of your issue.

Also, like claanu said, the bluepill itself is supposed to have 2 jumpers on the bluepill itself, Otherwise it's not going to be actually running the bluescsi code. If you just plug it in to USB for power, with no SD card in it, does the PC13 LED blink 5x?

If you're in the US, shoot me a DM and I can throw a correct 220 ohm resistor net in an envelope and mail it to you free of charge. (and a couple of jumpers for the bluepill if you need it)

 

[Scott Squires]

There are several issues with this assembly. As @Daniël points out, that SD card slot is probably shorting scsi termination power. Every time you turn this on you're testing the machine's scsi fuse. (Not a good thing.)

 

[demik]

More than one thing is off. One resistor pack is off, the others are likely backwards and the SD socket is suspicious.

Where did you get this kit ?

 

[Andrew18489]

I guess I should share the long history on this.
I bought this BlueSCSI on eBay from a seller claiming they were authorized who is still selling BlueSCSI today. Since I don’t have any idea myself how to solder, I asked someone else to. A resistor got lost during my search for help. The person helping me bought a new one. He tried to get it from Mouser but it didn’t ship for 2 months and hasn’t to this day shown up. He ordered another resistor from a U.S. distributor, but didn’t tell me what one. We put it all together, and then within 30 minutes of me testing it, the SD card fell off. We repaired the board and added some apoxie to the SD card slot to better hold it in place. If we didn’t touch the board long enough, the PC13 LED would quit flashing. I know nothing about the pins. What I know is that uBreakiFix doesn’t lie in their commercial. I moved away from the people who were helping me with the soldering, and when I saw the posts about repairing the board, I gave uBreakiFix a call. Not yet knowing how much damage was present, they said they’d get the right parts and fix it for me. They do microsoldering at some locations.
P.S. has anyone ever taken anything Macintosh related to uBreakiFix?

 

[Scott Squires]

At this stage it may not be productive or economical to spend more money on this bluescsi. Consider ordering a pre-assembled one instead of a kit, or one of the other scsi drive replacements which come already assembled.

 

[Skate323k137]

At this stage it may not be productive or economical to spend more money on this bluescsi. Consider ordering a pre-assembled one instead of a kit, or one of the other scsi drive replacements which come already assembled.

I hate to agree, but I agree. Looking at it, the amount of time it would take to setup, rework, clean up, etc., is more than just replacing it. And I have the proper equipment.

Sadly this reminds me why I learned to desolder. It was because I didn't trust myself to do it, and instead of removing a faulty ROM myself I asked a friend to remove the DIP chip for me. He was super confident about it, but when I got the board back he had smoked at least 8 of 40 pads, and I had to do a bunch of trace repair to fix the PCB (It was a NEO GEO MVS game of all things, too...). I did end up fixing it, but after that, I vowed to up my game and not let other people work on my stuff if I can avoid it, unless of course it's a professional repair shop/person for that kind of item.

In my experience, I generalize that working on a vintage or faulty item is always easier if someone else hasn't tried to fix it first.

 

[jwg1962]

@Andrew18489 I am not sure if you bought this from me or another eBay seller. I am the only eBay seller in the US. The one you have above is version 1.0b model. I have one of these in my stock that I never sold that is fully assembled and tested. I would be happy to send it to you if you were willing to pay for the shipping? I am not sure where you are located (i.e. In the US or abroad) so I am not sure how much shipping would be from Pittsburgh PA to where you are. Let me know what you want to do.

I am also happy to see that you were truthful in what happened which is why I am willing to send you one just for the cost of shipping. I have had folks purchase kits from me and totally toast them and then claim it was a defect in the kit. I personally inspect every part and kit that goes out the door and double-test everything. Not to say that I don't make mistakes, but when I do, I own up to them and resolve the issue. Thank you.

 

[Andrew18489]

What SCSI ID do I use?

 

[Skate323k137]

What SCSI ID do I use?

Without any context, 1 should work. 7 is reserved on compact macs.

 

[Andrew18489]

I have a disk image from Disk jockey and a homemade System 7.5 floppy set. Do I need anything else?