• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

My IIfx progress

Phipli

Well-known member
Congrats! When they work, IIfx seems to be very nice machine...

But in my opinion, they are way too complicated for their own good. Too many (unexploited) I/O processors, too many buffers, a PDS that isn't 'direct', weird memory, ... I still wish I had one though :)
Yeah, I've never even used one let alone owned one.

When I was a teenager, I saw an advert for one "free to a good home" and my dad talked me out of it because it was a long way away and he pointed out they used weird RAM. Wish I'd pushed more! At the time I had a IIci that was about 12 or so years old.

Can't complain really - the IIci was great fun.

Here's the IIfx being unusually stable 😃
That's a lot of 68k fun going on there. Playing MODs while rendering in infini-d with the tessellating cats. Just need the AfterDark Fish! screensaver, or possibly "Bad Dog!" and the Grouch wastebasket patch. and eyes in the menubar.
 

Quadraman

Well-known member
I have a IIfx that had a severely rotted motherboard. I bought a recapped board, put it in, and it still didn't boot. I changed the batteries and reset the PRAM, and still nothing. I figured the power supply caps were bad, and went through 3 more PSU's, and still nothing. It sits in my storage unit, waiting for me to feel inspired to look at it again.
 

SophieRose

Well-known member
I have a IIfx that had a severely rotted motherboard. I bought a recapped board, put it in, and it still didn't boot. I changed the batteries and reset the PRAM, and still nothing. I figured the power supply caps were bad, and went through 3 more PSU's, and still nothing. It sits in my storage unit, waiting for me to feel inspired to look at it again.
Yep mine sat for a year.. 😢 until I could muster some enthusiasm.
20231011_182818.jpg
There cant be much wrong with this now.. its passing tests.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
If it is been intermittent it might be a dry joint that moves when it gets warm. Perhaps get a wooden sewer and try to make it crash, poke chips until it crashes.

I always hate the last little bit. I have a machine that is fine for the first ten minutes then randomly crashes.
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
If it is been intermittent it might be a dry joint that moves when it gets warm. Perhaps get a wooden sewer and try to make it crash, poke chips until it crashes.

I always hate the last little bit. I have a machine that is fine for the first ten minutes then randomly crashes.

I had a similar issue with my 8100 years ago. After no leads anywhere, I finally figured out that of all things, the PSU was putting out dirty power…and causing random freezing and crashing in the first 10-15 min of the machine being on. I swapped out the PSU and it worked fine. I verified it by scoping the power output of both supplies, and on the original there was definite low level hum on the incoming DC rails.
 
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