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SE/30 can’t find HD

fimbulvetr

Well-known member
I can’t figure this one out.  I have a socketed SE/30 with a daystar powercache 40mhz accelerator in it that suddenly stopped finding the hard drive. There is nothing wrong with the drive as it works fine in my other (unsocketed) SE/30, and it won’t find my scsi2sd when I tried that. It boots fine off a floppy or a floppyemu. The motherboard was recapped a couple years age, and it has run fine until now. I tried tattletech, and that said no scsi devices are connected. Lido comes up with an error “Arbitration failed! Check connections and terminators on all SCSI devices.” I tried re-seating all the ram etc. No luck! 

Any idea what might be wrong? Thanks!

 

fimbulvetr

Well-known member
Replacing a 44 pin SMD chip like NCR53C80 is definitely well beyond my comfort level, soldering equipment, and skills. Replacing the fuses I could do. There are 2 there .. F2 and F3. One or both? What are the specs of the fuse? They look fine to me, I don’t know how fuses like that look when they blow.

 
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Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Doesn't matter how they look, only if they still complete the circuit. Continuity tester time. They switched from DIP to Surface Mount for the SE/30 controller?

 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Makes sense, now I'm curious about the SE. Shouldn't have been surprised, but I was all dopey from cold meds  .  .  .  well .  .  .  more dopey than usual. :blink:

Try stopping by one of the hole in the wall places where they fix phones. SMT rework is what they do, at least that's what someone did to fix my 5c. Maybe someone will do it inexpensively and without shipping it, probably while you wait even.

 

fimbulvetr

Well-known member
Well, the fuses are fine, I plugged in a Zip drive with active termination into the rear scsi port with no luck, then I got out a magnifying glass and took a look at the scsi controller.  Looks like when the previous owner recapped the logic board they didn’t deal with the corrosion damage from cap goo under the scsi controller. 

E3558680-19BF-4157-8F26-EF4D906C8C47.jpeg

27E3A1EB-5E69-4397-A9C8-8E339CEA9B15.jpeg

 
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just.in.time

Well-known member
That sucks that it wasn’t properly cleaned last time.

I’m wondering if you can give it a good wash to actually clear any remaining electrolitic fluid and then just resolder each pin one at a time along that side facing the capacitors. Just 11 pins right? If you have a solder sucked it shouldn’t be too horrible.

Maybe someone with more experience around that chip can comment. At any rate, if previous owner screwed up cleaning there you can probably assume the rest of the board had a crap cleaning job as well. So a thorough washing is probably in order regardless before other common areas are damaged.

 

fimbulvetr

Well-known member
I ordered a new NCR 53C80 SCSI controller. I'll see if I can find an electronics repair place in Ottawa that can handle replacing it for me. 

 
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