Hi, I recently bought a Quadra 950 and have been having some problems with it. It doesn't seem like there are a lot of these, and thusly not much information on them, so I was hoping someone here on this wonderful forum might have some insights to share.
So, I bought a Quadra 950 on eBay, supposedly working before it was shipped. It arrived mostly undamaged, at least cosmetically. The clip that holds the motherboard from sliding forward was broken, which allowed it to slide into the reset/debug buttons and break them during shipping. And the NuBus SuperMac video card it came with popped out of place and was just sliding around freely in the case during shipping.
So, I get it then I plug it up to my AppleVision 750AV monitor, and try to turn it on with my Apple Extended Keyboard II. The PSU fan comes on, the LED on the motherboard comes on, the caddy loader CD drive lights up, and the hard drive spins up, it supplies power to the monitor through the output on the PSU, and... nothing. No chimes, nothing on the screen, nothing. No indication of the HDD being accessed. I tried sticking in a floppy and listening for those familiar loud disk seeking noises, and nothing. So, I know the 750AV monitor is kinda weird and doesn't like to turn on when the signal is on and off, so I hooked it up to an AppleColor display that doesn't do that, and still nothing on the screen.
So, the first thing I do is pull out the PRAM battery, that made no difference.
Okay, well, it was being shipped, and the motherboard was allowed to slide back and forth. So I went through and reseated pretty much every component, didn't help.
I tried the onboard video and removed the NuBus card, didn't help.
I removed the DayStar cache card, nothing.
Removed all but one bank of RAM, nothing.
Used a different set of SIMMs in bank one, nothing.
Removed all drives, nothing.
Removed the VRAM from the onboard sockets, nothing.
So, I pulled it apart entirely, blew everything out with an air compressor, put it back together and still nothing.
I closely inspected the motherboard around where the NuBus card was since it was sliding around, and it didn't look like anything had been scraped off. The only thing "missing" I found were a few resistors on the motherboard up underneath the power supply. Nothing could really get to that area to rip them off, so I assume they're supposed to be missing? R58 and some other one I can't recall. Anyway, I looked around on the bottom of the board since it was free floating the entire time and everything seemed to be in place.
Oh also, I tested the hard drive in my Macintosh SE. It booted up to System 7.1, so that's in working order. Not that it really has anything to do with this.
The only things I haven't done are:
-Give the PSU a voltage test. I'm not entirely sure how to go about this, so any help would be appreciated.
-Reseat the CPU. I seem to find information claiming that the CPU is socketed and removable without desoldering anything. Is that true? I can't figure out how to get it off, if it is. I'm not afraid of soldering, but I don't want to mess with the CPU if there's nothing that indicates that could be the problem.
And one additional bit of information, before I had given everything a good looking over and I initially tried to turn it on, the debug button had been held in since the plastic part was broken and jammed. Would this cause any issues? I know Macs are kinda weird about the debug buttons but really I have no idea what kind of damage they can cause.
Anyway, that's the extent of my story, and pretty much the extent of my troubleshooting abilities. If anyone has any thoughts, comments, or help to offer, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for welcoming me into your forum.
So, I bought a Quadra 950 on eBay, supposedly working before it was shipped. It arrived mostly undamaged, at least cosmetically. The clip that holds the motherboard from sliding forward was broken, which allowed it to slide into the reset/debug buttons and break them during shipping. And the NuBus SuperMac video card it came with popped out of place and was just sliding around freely in the case during shipping.
So, I get it then I plug it up to my AppleVision 750AV monitor, and try to turn it on with my Apple Extended Keyboard II. The PSU fan comes on, the LED on the motherboard comes on, the caddy loader CD drive lights up, and the hard drive spins up, it supplies power to the monitor through the output on the PSU, and... nothing. No chimes, nothing on the screen, nothing. No indication of the HDD being accessed. I tried sticking in a floppy and listening for those familiar loud disk seeking noises, and nothing. So, I know the 750AV monitor is kinda weird and doesn't like to turn on when the signal is on and off, so I hooked it up to an AppleColor display that doesn't do that, and still nothing on the screen.
So, the first thing I do is pull out the PRAM battery, that made no difference.
Okay, well, it was being shipped, and the motherboard was allowed to slide back and forth. So I went through and reseated pretty much every component, didn't help.
I tried the onboard video and removed the NuBus card, didn't help.
I removed the DayStar cache card, nothing.
Removed all but one bank of RAM, nothing.
Used a different set of SIMMs in bank one, nothing.
Removed all drives, nothing.
Removed the VRAM from the onboard sockets, nothing.
So, I pulled it apart entirely, blew everything out with an air compressor, put it back together and still nothing.
I closely inspected the motherboard around where the NuBus card was since it was sliding around, and it didn't look like anything had been scraped off. The only thing "missing" I found were a few resistors on the motherboard up underneath the power supply. Nothing could really get to that area to rip them off, so I assume they're supposed to be missing? R58 and some other one I can't recall. Anyway, I looked around on the bottom of the board since it was free floating the entire time and everything seemed to be in place.
Oh also, I tested the hard drive in my Macintosh SE. It booted up to System 7.1, so that's in working order. Not that it really has anything to do with this.
The only things I haven't done are:
-Give the PSU a voltage test. I'm not entirely sure how to go about this, so any help would be appreciated.
-Reseat the CPU. I seem to find information claiming that the CPU is socketed and removable without desoldering anything. Is that true? I can't figure out how to get it off, if it is. I'm not afraid of soldering, but I don't want to mess with the CPU if there's nothing that indicates that could be the problem.
And one additional bit of information, before I had given everything a good looking over and I initially tried to turn it on, the debug button had been held in since the plastic part was broken and jammed. Would this cause any issues? I know Macs are kinda weird about the debug buttons but really I have no idea what kind of damage they can cause.
Anyway, that's the extent of my story, and pretty much the extent of my troubleshooting abilities. If anyone has any thoughts, comments, or help to offer, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for welcoming me into your forum.