DANG! Q605 Chimes of Death

[MinerAl]

Had the Q605 board up and running in a P460 case, grooving along with 36MB of RAM and 512k VRAM, full 040 with a heat sink. I was getting ready to do the 33MHz hack. Everything was very happy.

Left it on over the weekend. When I got back the mouse was frozen, clock was frozen, Mac was frozen. I was busy so I just turned it off, and went about my day. Didn't give it much thought.

Came in today early with my new-in-box LCPDS Ethernet card (thanks olePigeon!), popped the case, seated the card, hit the switch, and got the regular startup chime followed immediately by the 8-note major-then-minor Chimes of Death.

So I went into test mode.

• Without the new Ethernet card, COD (I left it off for the rest).
• Without the 32MB RAM stick, COD.
• Without the 2 VRAM sticks, COD.
• Without the external Zip SCSI drive, COD.
• Without internal SCSI HD, COD.
• Without (brand new) PRAM battery, COD.
• Without floppy drive, or any SCSI drives, or RAM, or VRAM, or PRAM battery, COD.
• As above with a different power supply, COD.
• As above with the original LC040 chip, COD.

Other than capacitors, I'm out of ideas. Anyone have a secret technique/test/idea before I spend even more money on this getting it re-capped (for no guarantee of working)?

 

[beachycove]

Try a different hard drive? My 605 did something similar a couple of years ago that I could not figure out. I first swapped everything but the drive, but in the end, it turned out to be the drive.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

ISTR that 8 note tone being a memory test failure. Dunno though. I think there was a lookup table for the different tones of death. Anybody got a line on that one?

macintosh "chimes of death"

olePigeon's thread: Quadra 605 chime of death.

 

[Macdrone]

Has the board been recapped? I know I am beating a dead horse but so far 99 percent of these issues are heat related/age/capacitor failure related. The capacitor heats up, the goo leaks some more (due to age and heat) and boom dead. Also try the quick power on unplug plug in power on again to see if the pram battery is giving you issues. Some boards do, some boards dont.

 

[uniserver]

its all about the caps.

the Caps were getting ready to give out.. and the NIC was the fat lady that sings, in this case its COD.

 

[onlyonemac]

The first thing to do is to look up which code it is. Does it show the code on the screen?

On a somewhat related note (no pun intended :lol: ), mine did a funny chime thing when the hard drive was failing. It would play the first two notes of the upward arpegio, followed by a normal chime and usual startup (if I happened to have a boot disk available ). I might try mixing together a mockup of it if needed...

Also, check your keyboard's working! If the power button's pressed (or damaged) then it can cause a chime of death, and might also explain the initial freeze (i.e. it got interrupted by the interrupt switch :lol: ).

 

[MinerAl]

Nothing makes it to the screen, so there's no code to read. From what I've read the COD I'm hearing is the generic "something's very wrong" sound. I've had PCs that'll beep a meaningful number of times if there's an error on the board, but this doesn't seem to be that way.

Add: "Without keyboard, COD" to the list above.

It CODs with no SCSI devices at all, so if it's a SCSI issue it's before it leaves the logic board.

I'm sure it's caps, but I hate to dump more money into this and have it still not work. I'll have to pay Uniserver to re-cap it; I have giant (burned) ham-hands when it comes to soldering. I am the worst.

*sigh*

 

[trag]

If you have a volt meter, you might check the voltage levels coming from the power supply. However, it would have to be in a pretty narrow range -- low enough to make the memory or something fail, yet high enough for the CPU to run properly long enough for the test to fail.

But, probably caps.

Try washing the board. Sometimes the caps leak and the leakage is conductive. Wash the board thoroughly, using your favorite method -- many have been suggested.

Then test again.

If it works after washing, you know it's the caps, and you can get them replaced secure in the knowledge that it's not good money going after bad.

If washing doesn't work, it could still be the caps, but I can't think of any other mostly free tests that require only moderate skill which would make that determination.

The fact is that any 68K machine anyone wants to keep needs the logic board caps replaced at this point. Leaving the old caps in is almost as bad as leaving the original battery installed and putting the thing in storage.

 

[Macdrone]

Also someone here mentioned after washing you can take a screwdriver and put a dent in the top of the caps and sometimes that will allow it to work temporarily. I did that with a classic board ust to make sure I wanted a certain board capped.

 

[trag]

Don't put a dent in the caps. They are tightly wound little sandwiches of conductor with incredibly thin dielectric material between them. Denting them is just asking for the two plates to short together.