IIci victories and woes

[Corgi]

The 8•24 NuBus card came today, so I decided my Friday night project would be trying to bring it up on the IIci. It was replacing what I thought was a dead SuperMac Spectrum/8 III.

Tried two monitors and no video. Moved it to a different slot, no video. Saw a thread from a number of years ago about UH1 perhaps needing cleaning (hopefully not replacement), so I set out to go ahead and check the whole board.

To my shock, this seems to be the one system I didn't strip the battery from. Thankfully it did not bomb yet. It was fully intact, and it is now pulled out. (Victory!) UH1 did seem to have some dirt and grime around it, so I cleaned it with IPA and let it dry for about an hour. Visual inspection obviously isn't everything but the board seemed fine and there was no obvious sign of leakage anywhere. (Victory!)

Powered it back on after cleaning, and still had nothing on either NuBus card, using either monitor. (Woe.) I made a floppy with TattleTech on it so I could see if the system could see anything in NuBus. The floppy drive made some odd noises and then the system said "This MS-DOS disk cannot be read. Initialise or Eject?" (It's HFS formatted, on my 1400c.) I tried Eject. Nothing happened and it popped up again. I chose Eject again and the eject mechanism came to life as normal… and then freewheeled. I had to disassemble the entire computer to remove the floppy from the drive; the paper clip hole didn't work at all.

I reassembled everything and now the eject motor seems permanently stuck on, even though there's no disk inside. I tried putting a disk inside and it became stuck too I'm thinking the whole drive needs to be cleaned and relubricated so I've taken it out for another day. (Woe.)

One other thing I've noticed is that there's no sound. I plugged some JVC earbuds into the headphone jack in the back and hear nothing there as well – tried making beeps in the Sound control panel etc to no avail. I don't recall if it has ever chimed since I've owned it (I got it as part of a lot of old Power Macs in June). Could the lack of sound be a clue as to why the NuBus slots appear to not work? I won't know for sure if NuBus is working or not until I'm able to fix the floppy and run TattleTech, but it seems like maybe there is either more than one issue, or one larger issue.

 

[Phipli]

I reassembled everything and now the eject motor seems permanently stuck on, even though there's no disk inside. I tried putting a disk inside and it became stuck too I'm thinking the whole drive needs to be cleaned and relubricated so I've taken it out for another day. (Woe.)

Sounds like the eject gear has failed to me. You'll need a replacement as well as lubricating the drive's moving parts.

The 8•24 NuBus card came today, so I decided my Friday night project would be trying to bring it up on the IIci. It was replacing what I thought was a dead SuperMac Spectrum/8 III.

Tried two monitors and no video. Moved it to a different slot, no video. Saw a thread from a number of years ago about UH1 perhaps needing cleaning (hopefully not replacement), so I set out to go ahead and check the whole board.

What monitors? Apple CRTs or VGA? If VGA, are you using a ten switch adapter?

 

[Corgi]

Sounds like the eject gear has failed to me. You'll need a replacement as well as lubricating the drive's moving parts.

Oh no. I'll start with lubricating and cleaning and see how it goes. I seem to recall a thread recently where the eject gears were deemed unobtainium at this point, and 3D-printed alternatives don't hold up.

What monitors? Apple CRTs or VGA? If VGA, are you using a ten switch adapter?

VGA, specifically the Samsung 943N and 570V, both known to work with sync-on-green. They both work on internal video, as well. The SuperMac shows "check signal cable" which made me think it was dead. The 8•24 does not show "check signal cable" but a picture never displays. It is a 16 DIP switch adaptor. I have it set to 1,2,5/8; various other settings, including 3,4,5/8, didn't help.

I think I may still have a Macintosh 12" RGB in storage. I can see if I can dig that out this weekend, if you think it would help testing.

 

[Phipli]

Oh no. I'll start with lubricating and cleaning and see how it goes. I seem to recall a thread recently where the eject gears were deemed unobtainium at this point, and 3D-printed alternatives don't hold up.



VGA, specifically the Samsung 943N and 570V, both known to work with sync-on-green. They both work on internal video, as well. The SuperMac shows "check signal cable" which made me think it was dead. The 8•24 does not show "check signal cable" but a picture never displays. It is a 16 DIP switch adaptor. I have it set to 1,2,5/8; various other settings, including 3,4,5/8, didn't help.

I think I may still have a Macintosh 12" RGB in storage. I can see if I can dig that out this weekend, if you think it would help testing.

I sounds like you're on top of it dip switch wise, I'd try an apple monitor to be sure though. Do you have a 13" rather than a 12? Just to get 640*480 as it is a tad more normal than the weird LC resolution.

Ignore the doom and gloom regarding gears. Ask about and find out what ones people have been happy with and skip over posts saying they're all terrible, given "no gear" is worse than "works but I don't like xyz". Also, I've seen people explaining how gears are complex to design due to the involute etc. It really isn't that unlikely that someone got it right. Machining replacement gears for clocks is something people do. Main issue is going to be the finish / print quality, so I'd try to get an SLA (stereolithography) print and / or cleaning them up a little with fine wet and dry paper. If I was feeling really brave I might try flame polishing one... but only if I was feeling brave and had some spares!

If the motor is running and the disk isn't coming out, it is extremely unlikely to be anything other than the gear. It isn't the end of the world. An extremely common issue. I'd just say lubricate your other drives before using them, as a stiff mechanism significantly increases the risk of a gear failing as it has more torque to transfer.