PM7100 No Chime, No Video.

[pezter22]

The PM7100 is a huge pain to work on. I have three PM7100 boards all with the same issue - no chime, no video. This one has a Sonnet G3 card, but I remove it to add the standard video card.

Yesterday on my working PM7100 it booted fine before shutdown and added new 32mb RAM to bring it to 128mb. On restart, no chime and I know this rabbit hole. I have two other PM7100 boards with the same issue. It's not the RAM. RAM boots on my PM6100. PRAM battery is 3.6v. Nothing was changed beyond RAM. I replaced the RAM to the previous set up and same result. I changed ROM, video cards and used the onboard HDI-45 video. No change.

This board has not been recapped, but the other two have. The power supply has also been recapped. All three exhibit the same no chime, no video.

This is frustrating because all three boards are exhibiting the same thing. It acts as other boards needs a reset such as the later boards with a Cuda button. The Reset/Program Switch buttons on the front do nothing. Everything works if I transfer to a working PM6100. And working on the PM7100 is difficult because of the drive shelf and power supply placement.

 

[greystash]

That's a strange one, the first generation PPCs can be tricky. Have you tried removing the Sonnet and booting without it?
I know for sure that a 6100 will give the exact same symptoms without a new/good battery.
Did you use an anti-static wrist strap? I killed a machine of the same generation from this when I was a teenager and didn't know about this being an issue. Maybe they're more sensitive than other models?

 

[pezter22]

That's a strange one, the first generation PPCs can be tricky. Have you tried removing the Sonnet and booting without it?
I know for sure that a 6100 will give the exact same symptoms without a new/good battery.
Did you use an anti-static wrist strap? I killed a machine of the same generation from this when I was a teenager and didn't know about this being an issue. Maybe they're more sensitive than other models?

I have two PM7100's one with the G3 card and one without. Both of them has this same issue of no chime, no video on three motherboards. This last occurrence happened when I upgraded the RAM. I replaced the old RAM and still nothing.

My workshop is in my basement so not much chance of static buildup. I work on old and new computers and other devices so I don't think that would be my issue.

It is strange that three boards have the same issue. I've recapped the boards and power supplies. switched boards, ROM, RAM and video cards with the same result. Its as if they need to be reset like with the later boards having a Cuda button. I have pressed the buttons on the front and have held down the power button for 30 sec. Nothing changes.

These are definitely weird boards.