Macintosh SE Frequent Crashes

[rjkucia]

Hi all, I posted this thread over on TinkerDifferent, and I was hoping to post here to get some more eyes on it.

tl;dr - As far as I can tell there was a bad stick of RAM which is now replaced, which helped a lot. However, I'm still having lots of errors with more advanced workflows and I'm starting to think it's SCSI related. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

I've replaced the memory, and I *think* that's helped things, but things are still weird. I was able to fully boot System 7 pretty consistently, even 7.5, along with playing some games that wouldn't run before. However, there's still a few instances of crashing, and oftentimes when I reboot, the image becomes unusable - sometimes I get to "Welcome to Macintosh", where it will then loop or blink, or sad Mac errors, or "Address Errors" or "Coprocessor not detected" errors. I also had several files that errored out when I copied a bunch of files from one BlueSCSI image to another. Additionally, depending on my configuration of BlueSCSI images, not all of the drives will show up on the desktop, even though the log says the devices were found, and utilities can usually see there's something on that SCSI ID (just not mounted).

This makes me think there might be some SCSI issues as well.

What's a good way of testing that? Are there other things I should be looking at? Could it be an issue with the BlueSCSI itself? Does anyone have a "known good" image that basically just has System 6 and whatever utilities would be good for testing this? Thanks!

Edit: Some other things - the errors tend to persist more with a soft-reboot vs cutting power and waiting a bit. I also tried the BlueSCSI on both the external and the internal SCSI port. Another common error message I've been seeing is "Stack Collision with Heap"

 

[Johnnya101]

With the cutting off power and waiting a bit, it kind of possibly sounds like a power supply issue. They are starting to fail right around now. Not saying it is your issue, but if it has not been recapped yet, I'd recap it. Might even have other bad components. I had an SE/30 that would not boot to the rominator disk correctly and gave random errors, was a bad power supply. The SCSI disk errors, as in not seeing some drives could be caused by not enough power. But, as you already said, could very well be an SCSI issue.

 

[alectrona2988]

Have you recapped the system yet? It may be working but those caps have little time left. Would recommend doing so if you haven't.

 

[rjkucia]

I have not recapped anything yet. Power supply would make sense, especially since it does seem to get worse the longer it's powered on.

Is there a good way do test whether it could be the power supply/SCSI/something else? I'm not very good at soldering so I'd like to avoid recapping if possible, or at least until I'm confident that that's the issue. For example, a visual inspection or traces I could be checking.

Edit: It looks like it's pretty easy to get an ATX PSU set up, I might try that as a short-term test/fix http://www.toughdev.com/content/2017/05/replacing-the-power-supply-in-the-macintosh-se/

 

[Crutch]

Good idea. If that works, with a bit more work you can of course install a small ATX PSU in the original PSU chassis such that you can use the original power cord and switch. As I recall the only soldering needed was to connect the original switch to the ATX mains connection (so, just soldering 3 fat wires, pretty easy). There's a long thread on here somewhere from late 2018 where as I recall @superjer2000 , me and some other folks described doing so.

 

[Johnnya101]

The other easy way to figure out if it's the PSU is to buy a working pull off eBay, but they have gotten kind of expensive lately.

 

[rjkucia]

The other easy way to figure out if it's the PSU is to buy a working pull off eBay, but they have gotten kind of expensive lately.

Yeah, I had considered that, I see them for ~$50, but I do have one or two old PSUs on hand that sound like they should work.

What's a good way to attach the wires to the power supply input on the analog board? I don't want to cut off the old PSU's connector, but I also obviously don't want to have loose wires, haha

 

[rjkucia]

As an update on this - I haven't done the power supply swap yet, but I've narrowed down the issue a bit. The crashes only seem to happen when running software from the BlueSCSI, or running software copied off of it. For example, running LIDO off of it crashed pretty quickly, but running it off of a floppy works great.

There have also been a few other weird issues when using the BlueSCSI. For example, usually only about half the SCSI devices mount automatically. Even when just 1 drive image is on the BlueSCSI, it seems to "override" my internal drive and I can only boot from floppy or a BlueSCSI image. I thought maybe it was a SCSI ID issue, but the behavior is the same no matter what IDs I use. Once I'm booted, I can mount all the drives manually in LIDO and it seems to work fine then. Not sure how normal this is, though - it sounds like SCSI overall can be very finnicky.

How useful might a drive utility like Apple HD SC Setup be here? I've tried it a few times and got an error saying it couldn't write to the drive, but I don't think that was the "patched" version. I have that version on floppy so I can try that later today.

 

[Skate323k137]

Finnicky is a good word to describe SCSI.

When I recapped and restored my SE, I worked my way through various disk utils, but the patched HD SC setup is definitely useful.

 

[rjkucia]

I ran some LIDO tests, and here's what I'm getting on the BlueSCSI. The tests run fine on the internal HDD.

 

[Johnnya101]

What type of SD card is installed and how many gigabytes? You should be using a high quality high read write cycle card for these.

 

[rjkucia]

SanDisk Extreme Plus, 64GB, V30/U3 rating. Should be good, but it's brand new so maybe it's bad. But that's exactly where I was about to go next haha - I'm getting out an older (but known good) SD card to try next.

Edit: well, that SD card is giving Sad Mac errors on boot, so... maybe it's not known good lol

 

[Johnnya101]

Is the bluescsi installed internally or externally? How is it terminated? That SD card should be good enough. Kind of odd your lido test shows something about the read being different than the write. Either something's wrong with the bluescsi, or the drive isn't getting enough power, I'm thinking.

 

[rjkucia]

Currently externally, however I also had this behavior when using the internal cable. I believe termination is set correctly - my understanding is that if it didn't, it wouldn't get power at all? Additionally, I've tried giving it external power on USB, but didn't notice a difference. Not sure if that's supposed to help or not though.

I was thinking of getting a RaSCSI anyways, so maybe now's a good time to do that? I guess that'd tell us one way or the other if it's the BlueSCSI or the SE. I was going to hack up an ATX PSU to see if replacing that would help, but the one I have on hand only has 0.3A on the -12V rail, and it sounds like it'd need .5A to be a good replacement.

 

[Johnnya101]

Have you considered an scsi2sd or macsd? Both do the job and will work.

Terminated or not, I think it would still get power unless there's something different with the bluescsi versus scsi2sd and whatever else and how it gets terminated. If you plugged it in with USB and there was no difference, that eliminates the power issue. I think you may just be experiencing termination issues and some setting is not quite right. It should be set to ID 1. Is that what it's set for (if you even can set I'd)?

Also, check through the bluescsi site. Here's the termination page for example, with instructions to test voltage. https://github.com/erichelgeson/BlueSCSI/wiki/Termination

 

[rjkucia]

Here’s what the board looks like, in case you can see any jumpers that look like they may be in the wrong slot.

SCSI ID is set in software, if that’s what you mean - you choose per image what ID it should have.

I’ll check the voltage tomorrow, thanks for finding that!

 

[rjkucia]

I couldn't get a good reading on the BlueSCSI itself or on the SCSI port, but on Molex I got a solid and consistent 5.03V. I tried another time powering the BlueSCSI with USB just to check, and once again saw no difference in behavior. Based on that, unless there's something else to check I'm feeling pretty good by saying the PSU is probably good. 12V also looked good, not that that should matter here.

 

[cheesestraws]

I'm pretty sure I got that sense key issue with a BlueSCSI in my Plus: I got it formatted and working in the end but it was incredibly picky. It seems to work but I never got it to reliably pass the tests in Lido.

I don't know whether this is related to the marginal timing issues BlueSCSI seems to have; it might be, but I haven't done any serious digging.

 

[rjkucia]

I decided to order a RaSCSI and see how that works. I wanted to get one anyways, and this way I'll be able to tell whether it's my computer or the BlueSCSI.

 

[Skate323k137]

Good call, and good luck!