jmacz battery bombed IIci

[jckarter]

This is a great writeup, thanks!

I was turning it on throughout this process to test as I went along. Really satisfying when I got video for the first time, then a bit later after a few more fixes, a chime, and then a few more fixes later a cursor and blinking disk icon.

Out of curiosity, do you happen to still have any notes as to what fixes you made led to these improvements? I'm in a similar boat right now trying to revive a battery-bombed IIci, which while nowhere as severely damaged as yours, is still stuck at the "grey screen but no chime or boot" stage. I've been slowly poring over the schematics looking for broken connections but haven't found a smoking gun so far, so having some prior art to look at to help guide my search would be a big help. No worries if you don't remember though.

 

[jmacz]

is still stuck at the "grey screen but no chime or boot" stage.

Just to rule out, do you have a jumper installed on the ROM Select jumper pins in the middle of the board? There should be a jumper there or else you will get a blank screen, no chime, etc without a ROM installed in the ROM slot. With the jumper in place, it will use the onboard ROM chips.

If the jumper is there, then the next step would be to check whether all of the onboard ROM chips are connected properly and also all the traces to the ROM chips are intact. A bunch of the traces to the onboard ROM are in the area of the PRAM battery.

Lastly if you could upload a high resolution picture of the top and bottom of the motherboard, that might help me and others on the forum spot any other potential issues.

 

[bigmessowires]

I'll be receiving a battery-bombed IIcx today (though I don't know where I'll find space for it). I will be referring back to this post for inspiration and paint schemes! I love the blue LED.

EDIT: looks like the IIcx was just delivered... I need to get home and hide the box before my better half discovers I bought another computer.

 

[joshc]

EDIT: looks like the IIcx was just delivered... I need to get home and hide the box before my better half discovers I bought another computer.

Top tip: Buy LCs because they are easier to hide in places your other half won't find them. I've even used an LCIII as a door stop in the past. And they all look identical (to the untrained eye) so that creates a good cover story if you ever need it... "Oh no that's just the one I've had for 10 years already, you know I don't buy new computers anymore".

 

[jckarter]

Just to rule out, do you have a jumper installed on the ROM Select jumper pins in the middle of the board? There should be a jumper there or else you will get a blank screen, no chime, etc without a ROM installed in the ROM slot. With the jumper in place, it will use the onboard ROM chips.

If the jumper is there, then the next step would be to check whether all of the onboard ROM chips are connected properly and also all the traces to the ROM chips are intact. A bunch of the traces to the onboard ROM are in the area of the PRAM battery.

Lastly if you could upload a high resolution picture of the top and bottom of the motherboard, that might help me and others on the forum spot any other potential issues.

Thanks for the quick response! I had posted some pics in this thread:

IIci gives sad chimes with SE/30 ROM, silence with ROMinator and onboard ROM

Hi everyone! I've been trying to bring a IIci back to life that had pretty severe battery and cap damage. It looks like this computer had been stored vertically, but with the battery end high, so battery juice dripped downward through all of the ROMs and SIMM slots. I managed to do all the usual...

68kmla.org

I do have the ROM jumper, and I've also experimented with some ROM SIMMs. I had a 256KB ROM from an SE/30, which I know won't boot a IIci, but which interestingly gets far enough to make the sad Mac chimes. With either the onboard ROMs, or a ROMinator SIMM, I get no chimes. The person I bought the machine from had gotten gray video from the machine, in its original unrestored state, but I haven't been able to replicate that (which might just be the tempermental onboard video not liking my VGA adapter).