Outbound Notebook 2000 Series - Odd RAM Install

[aplmak]

Hey everyone.. so I literally spent almost all day recapping my outbound notebook. I highly recommend it as mentioned in another post. The power pack external supply had leaky 330uf caps. In the laptop itself.. mostly the only leaky ones were on the battery interface power board. Pretty nasty leaking too.. I had to scrape up the traces to get all the black off then clean and apply trace coating over it. Just some info to share to those Outbound Notebook owners out there. Taking it apart you have to be patient. There is a small tab under one of the rubber legs. Once you have that you have two tabs in the front. The front needs to be lifted first.. The rear where the ports are hook in there with 3 small plastic tabs. It's quite the project so be sure to do this when you have significant amount of time. I had to replace two added 1000pf 35v labeled as "102 and KLM". They jumper across on the large 220 cap in the battery power supply board (see photo below) and there is another one on the back of the main logic board that is jumped with an electrolytic cap that I replaced. When you do replace the logic board the small battery/power supply board is screwed in with a hex just so you know. Also when reassembling make sure to install the battery/power supply board first. I had one of the battery tabs above the battery drive cage.. I had to re-take it apart to get the tab under the cage.. so you install the battery power supply board first then plug the logic board into it.. there are a lot of other wires that hold the logic board in that need to be disconnected and reconnected.

Without going on about the recap I have to talk about something I never noticed with the Processor Card Board. The RAM installed in the 4 slots have the rear pins have a glued plastic strip on them. Any ideas why this is done?? Is this really needed?? Can I replace the RAM with larger 30 pin chips??? See what I am talking about in the photos below. It is running a 68030 at 33mhz and with a coprocessor and has Mac SE ROM's installed.. Is it is because it is not 32 bit clean?? I do have another processor board and that has regular 4MB chips in each of the 4 slots. I am not sure if Outbound's firmware does something or not.. or if I can put the 32bit control panel on it. It's very odd because the machine with the SE ROMS see's a total of 14MB. Anyone have any ideas on what's up with this configuration? I have run TattleTech and it says it is not 32bit compatible. I might try installing System32 control panel on it with my other board with larger size RAM.

 

[unity]

Odd. The RAM slot itself should have "pins" or teeth that would normally grab both sides of the SIMM, of course. So I can't see a reason to do this, its not like one side of the RAM chip is pinned different than the opposite side.

I have the 125 and I have to recap its power supple/battery interface. The actual adapter was missing, so I am using a new generic PC power adapter.

 

[aplmak]

Yes I have the 125 as well. That one is not as bad to recap internally if I remember. I had to cut some of the caps off and use the leads as you cannot access the other side of the board. Getting that little can where the largest capacitor is apart was a pain... Yes why the SIMMS are covered on the backside of each SIMM I have not a clue. You know in looking at the manual it shows different RAM configurations... and it shows way past 4MB. I'm thinking actually maybe they did this to bypass the Silicon Disk in the system... I just thought of that. I cannot access a Silicon Disk which is normally an option. Could it be using the rear pins for the other half of the memory for the Silicon Disk???

 

[unity]

They would have to be using some sorta sockets that dont have the conventional pins/teeth that bridge both sides of the SIMM. To me, that would be beyond odd. Weird about the silicone disk. It should prompt to be formatted via booting the Outbound or even in hose mode - my Plus even prompts to format. At which point it remains as long as there is power. I do believe an extension is needed for it to work though. I would look at the sockets and see if the connections in there are indeed atypical for other 30-pin sockets.

edit: This made me think I was wrong all these years, that indeed each side of a 30-pin SIMM is a separate side. So I checked sockets on a motherboard and the Outbound. Nope, those socket teeth are one metal piece that would touch both sides of a SIMM essentially making a connection from one side to the other. So then the question is if those pins on a SIMM are also connected on the SIMM board itself of if they relay on the socket for some sorta carry-over/bridge. Anyway... still no clue. You would think anything places on the SIMM contacts would make it much harder to install them.

edit: "..the most predominant form of memory module since the late 1990s, in that the contacts on a SIMM are redundant on both sides of the module."

 

[aplmak]

Just still really odd.. I personally have about 8 processor cards and various RAM chips for the Notebook mostly 25hz. including some sort of Diagnostics ROM SIMM. And I have floppies with 1.3, 1.3b, 1.3h or something like that.. and some that say beta... I can't remember where I purchased these as a lot.. But some of these parts I think were from a testing company or something maybe for Outbound. They have some odd stuff.. No documentation but just a bag of processors and ROMS.. This 68030 processor board was with it.. I don't think it's the original to my Outbound.. I wanted to upgrade to 33mhz. The next board I am upgrading it to is the 68040 40mhz processor board.. I just ordered a coprocessor for it. I have regular RAM installed in that one.. Very weird stuff.. In fact I have a PrarieTek drive that has some sort of very strange connector to it. It's not IDE or SCSI.. I'll take a pic and upload it..

Unity... I did post this in another thread but I thought I'd ask you since you are an expert..

The 102 (1000pf) tantalum caps that I had to replace, one was piggybacked on the 330uf cap and another one that was on the system board that went from a smaller 100uf 10v cap to another component. The repacement that I used was a Kemet 1000pf 200 Volt +-5% Tolerance cap... Is this ok do you think? The machine is running fine.. I am not sure if the tolerance should be bigger or if that value of tolerance is ok?? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.. The other one I ordered but hasn't come in yet was a 1000pf 100 Volt but with 10% Tolerance..

One other question... sorry.. I'm full of questions.. Can the Notebook be updated to System 7.5? I get a "System" "unimplemented trap" trying to boot from a 7.5 install diskette... I don't think it goes past 7.1... You think you would be able to since after all I have 7.5.5 running on PB100's and Mac Portables.. with 68000 processors....

Here's a pic of the very strange PrarieTek HDD... Of course I have a PrarieTek drive that's IDE in my 125 but this one is strange.. What the heck does it plug into???

 

[unity]

I am certainly no expert!

Thats is a pretty big voltage differential. I try to always match caps as close as possible. I will go with higher voltages, but not my that much. With that said, if its working it may not be an issue. Tolerance is an less worried about.

The notebook I know less about, but assume it can run up to 7.5.5. The max OS should be only limited by the ROMs. But is that an Apple or Outbound installer disk? I know on the 125 there is a method to updating the OS which involves an OutBound disk first - since I have no HD, I never dug deep into all that yet. And I assume you tried the disk with extensions off?

That is an interesting interface. Like some sorta micro IDE. No clue as I thought PT sorta established the mini drive market and I did not think in the later days they went onto other interfaces.

 

[aplmak]

Yes Unity I typically don't go that far in voltages either... lol.. It was the fact that I had ordered both a lower voltage one and the 200v. The lower voltage didn't come in yet and I was just itching to put the thing back together.. lol.. It's only two 1000pf small caps.. they were added after the fact so I am not sure what modification they are doing in fact. But yes it's operating as it should.

 

[aplmak]

Unity to go along with that oddball stuff look at these strange ROMS.. I’m not sure if the others with the stickers mean anything or they are regular ROMS.. but there’s a Diagnostic ROM….

 

[unity]

Interesting. Outbound could not sell Apple ROMs, but that does not mean they could not copy/modify them internally as needed. I wish there was more info on the company today. So little is known.

 

[aplmak]

I know… if we could find an formate employee…. Now here’s what’s really interesting…

Working with the daughter boards for the notebooks is an experience. I’ve tried to use the “Diags for system 2000” series ROMS and ROMS from other types of machines that are compatible with it. Even sometimes switching you run into trouble. This logic board has 5 - .22uf 5.5 super capacitors on it. So it’s kinda acting like a temporary PRAM batt. Trouble is switching around you have to wait till the power has drained from them. Otherwise you get all no time or bad boot screens!! I didn’t realize this at first. What may look to be a bad machine is really not if your playing with the ROMS on the daughter board! So how long does it take to drain is the question. And is there a bleed switch.. could it be this pinhole red button by the power outlet in back??? Who knows??? I tested my theory when it was having a completely blacked out screen at one point with ROM swapping and I shorted each of the caps (even though t think they might all link together.. I got voltage on them and as I slowly drained them It was ALL clear and you can throw a new ROM in! So perhaps this is why I cannot try the “Diag ROMS” in the photo above.
I wish I knew the formal drain procedure and how long!! It’s an ingenious setup.. but annoying for people testing and techs! I could tell these were working because with the battery removed and the power removed it held the date and time no matter what!

This must also be where it writes the new versions of firmware like the latest 1.3.3 I have. And I think it also writes it to the hard drive so when it dies deplete it rewrites it!

So I do have a spare logic board im recapping.. and lots of ROM modules and spare processor daughter cards with various 030 speeds.. right now I’m using a 68030 at 40 MHz with a co processor.

It’s all very intriguing..

In the pic is the strange reset button I’m taking about!!

 

[aplmak]

I’m looking at the manual yes I believe this discharges the super caps.. just would be nice to know for how long to hold it in..

 

[flyingforstatus]

I’m so glad to have found people with Outbound Notebook experience. Several years ago, I acquired 9 of them along with having the one I bought/used when I was in high school in 1994.

Over the years, I sold some on eBay for $200-400 ea. (mostly non-working or non-booting) and I am now left with 5. For those 5, I replaced hard disks, upgraded the RAM, and partially recapped them leaving them all (mostly) working.

I also could not get any system higher than 7.1 to install… Question: If you upgrade the CPU to a 68030/40MHz (from a 25/33), do you also need to replace the crystal on the processor card? Any other change for the faster CPU? I am very jealous of your collection of Outbound components!