New (to me) IIci

[Von]

So I recently won an "untested" IIci and it arrived yesterday.  I knew there was a good chance untested meant it would not start up and that happened. The reason I went for this one was that from the photos the board looked in OK shape.  What I could not see from the photos whether the PRAM battery had had a meltdown....



Luckily this circa '91 beauty was still intact!

Here is the board:



View attachment 24775

And the easter egg signatures:



I will get this recapped but I am hoping to try firing this up with PS from my IIsi that now has a SeaSonic PS contained within...more to come on this.

My plan is to run my Daystar 601 in this machine. I'd like to get an ethernet and video card to go along with it.

 

[LaPorta]

Good luck! Looks like a nice little project there that I hope is not too involved.

 

[Von]

Great progress.  I need to replace the PS and I have a SeaSonic on its way from NewEgg.

This is the IIci board on its side so that it can mate with my IIsi PS that already has a SeaSonic PS:



Not shown in the photo is the my external SCSI disk enclosure that IIci board is booting too. The boot to the present OS on the board failed so I will next try the drive that came with the machine.  I'd boot to floppy and choose another OS on the external drive but there is no way I am going to get the floppy cable attached while the board is like this. FYI, the reason it is on it side as that was the only way I could get make the connection to the IIsi PS keeping connection and not leaning on the board.

Here is another shot of...apology for the poor image quality.



I had the speaker attached and there was no chime...I believe I'll get in line at AllMacs for a recap.

 

[Von]

More good news...the board boots to the drive that came with the machine:



I find it weird opening someone else's drive...I am glad the previous own left only the System Folder on "Susie's Big Toe"

I think I have 4 other 4MB RAMs to get it up to 32MB.

 

[IlikeTech]

LMAO what is that name?

 

[tanaquil]

Now I want to know what the other computers in that user's fleet (?) were called.

A recap is always a good thing, but if the IIci is anything like the IIsi, you could also try cleaning the speaker contacts. A pencil eraser didn't work for me, but a rougher file (I used one of those things that looks like a q-tip but with some kind of metallic file material on it) did the trick. 

That said, I also recapped and added solder to the dented-looking solder on the bottom side of the board at the point where the speaker makes contact, so I can't say which of the three was most effective.

Great to see an old machine being brought to life.

 

[superjer2000]

The IIci speaker has an actual cable that plugs into the motherboard.  I'm currently battling with the startup circuit on my IIci.  A few years ago before I knew about leaky capacitors, it started up perfectly fine from the keyboard.  Fast forward to a capacitor replacement and leakage cleanup and it no longer started from the keyboard.  I have replaced the three logic chips that drive the circuit and one transistor and now I'll try to replace the other transistors and diodes.  I already buzzed all of the lines and I fixed the traces that had issues but still no dice.  I'm now building a cable from my IIci/IIcx power supply to the logic board so I can bench test the voltages to see if I can narrow down the problem if these last few scattershot part replacements don't do the trick.

 

[superjer2000]

On the subject of recapping IIcis - I was able to get my IIci's soft power working again.  I had already jumpered a couple of bad connections on the board and just a couple of days ago I replaced all of the logic chips, transistors and diodes that are part of the soft power circuit and there wasn't really any change.  At the end, the issue was a via that had gone bad (I'm assuming to a connection in the middle layer of the PCB.  I jumpered that connection and now the softpower is working perfectly.  Moral of the story:  Recap these boards as quickly as possible and clean up the capacitor goo  as thoroughly as possible otherwise it will likely keep eating away at the board.  

 

[Von]

...clean up the capacitor goo  as thoroughly as possible otherwise it will likely keep eating away...

Yep. I will clean it before I get it recapped. Today I scored a video and ethernet card so I want to try those before the recap.  While gathering some stuff for a Good Will run, I found the soft bristle tooth brush that will help with that cleaning.

 

[superjer2000]

When I was bench testing the IIci using the rebuilt Seasonic PSU with Noctua fan, I ended up building a cable that plugs into the bottom of the power supply and then into the motherboard so I could easily run the system outside of the case.  Made it super easy...

 

[Von]

My SeaSonic for the IIci should be arriving this week and I will likely do the same as I did with the IIsi which was pull the connection out of the bottom of the IIci PS and connect it directly to the SeaSonic.  FYI, NewEgg was out of the 250w so I got the 300w of the same line.  I am hoping it is exactly the same as the 250...we will see.