Color Classic II - Gibberish Characters (and other odd behaviour)

[TAMFan]

Hello all, hoping someone might be able to help me get to the bottom of this.

I opened a recent eBay purchase of my long-sought-after Color Classic II, and was immediately disappointed by lacklustre packing (resulting in some case damage) and a computer that boots to gibberish characters.

I have attached a couple photos of what this looks like.

I tried holding Shift to boot without extensions, no change. Tried removing the RAM stick, no change. Tried removing the PDS ethernet card, no change.

The logic board was recapped with tantalum caps by a previous owner. The keyboard has Japanese characters on it, and I know this model was mainly sold in Japan and Canada... so one of my hunches is that the characters are related to missing fonts maybe? I don't know, it's been a long time since I have tried to do anything with System 7

Other odd behaviour:

1) When I boot with extensions, it seems to claim there is an extra 132MB of RAM? I'm guessing that's some sort of HDD cache thing (RAM doubler?) but it also doesn't seem to see the 32MB stick of RAM.

2) After about 10 minutes of use, the screen took on a severe teal tint and the edges of the screen seemed "shimmery". I believe this is an indication of a bad analogue board (bad caps?)

My main hope is to at least get these characters to display correctly so I can better navigate the other trouble-shooting. Any help is very much appreciated.

 

[cheesestraws]

and a computer that boots to gibberish characters.

I think what you have there is half of a Japanese installation of the OS, without some critical bit - perhaps fonts, but perhaps something else - that allows system text to be drawn properly. Reinstalling the OS in the language of your choice should sort you out.

1) When I boot with extensions, it seems to claim there is an extra 132MB of RAM? I'm guessing that's some sort of HDD cache thing (RAM doubler?) but it also doesn't seem to see the 32MB stick of RAM.

Virtual memory is on - but that only works if extensions are on.

2) After about 10 minutes of use, the screen took on a severe teal tint and the edges of the screen seemed "shimmery". I believe this is an indication of a bad analogue board (bad caps?)

If the AB hasn't been recapped, it needs it. That isn't necessarily this problem, but it needs doing. Those ABs are not good - they were built cheaply and they're generally a pain.

 

[joshc]

It's a Japanese install (denoted by the J before the version in the About this Macintosh window), but as @cheesestraws rightly points out it is probably missing something related to the fonts to display them correctly. A fresh install is the way to go.

 

[cheesestraws]

it is probably missing something related to the fonts to display them correctly

I actually broke a Japanese installation once before and it ended up looking exactly like this Never worked out what I did precisely, just reinstalled instead.

 

[TAMFan]

Thanks! I'll give it a fresh OS install, once I figure out how to make those disks. The seller didn't include the system software floppies as advertised, and this is my first "floppy only" project

I'll definitely give the AB a recap as well, thanks.

Could the issue of it not seeing the 32MB RAM stick be related to the AB? Seems odd to me, but sometimes there are unexpected dependancies. The obvious answer for me would be "bad RAM stick", but I'm curious if there are things I can try first...

 

[cheesestraws]

Clean the RAM socket and contacts on the RAM first before you file the RAM as bad - sometimes it's just the grot of ages.

 

[TAMFan]

Will-do, some Deoxit recently arrived in the mail! Thanks so much for all the helpful and quick replies!