Troubleshooting the IIfx

[wood_e]

Ok so I figured I'd take my conquest thread here.

Background:

I purchased this IIfx not knowing of its condition. No idea on how much RAM and no HD.

I plugged it in last night and got nothing, no chime, nada.

Remembering that these were picky about PRAM batteries I put two new fresh ones in. That made it power on... then I heard the death chimes.

I removed a bank of RAM and now it chimes properly - but i get no video to my Apple 13" "high resolution" monitor.

It has a Macintosh II video card in it.

I ordered another nubus video card off ebay so we'll see if that fixes it.

I also ordered an ATTO SCSI card and an ethernet card.

...To be continued...

 

[Unknown_K]

Most ATTO SCSI cards are not bootable without modifications.

 

[MacG4]

sounds like you are doing everything right... trying doing a pram reset.

 

[wood_e]

Most ATTO SCSI cards are not bootable without modifications.

oh man bummer! What modifications do I need to do?

 

[Unknown_K]

Is it SEIV? If so you need a beta firmware hack.

http://www.fenestrated.net/~macman/stuff/SiliconExpress/

 

[Bolle]

they are bootable with the latest stable firmware as well.

 

[wood_e]

Did a little morre testing last night.

I noticed the IIfx has a riser for the ROM card from Spectrum engineering... what is this and is it necessary?

 

[equill]

What is attached to the riser? A ROM card is essential, since there is no onboard ROM, and a riser may be expected to do something other than raise the ROM card.

An aside—prompted by curiosity—that I have to raise concerns jumpers on the MLB. How do they lie on your MLB?

de

 

[wood_e]

I'll take a pic of the riser tonight and any jupmers

 

[wood_e]

Ok I'm going to post pics tonight.

I found the Q800 in 700 case that MacG4 sold me had a Radius Nubus card in it for video. Alas when I tried it I got no video from it.

I cleaned the motherboard throughly. and will try it tonight.

 

[wood_e]

Pics of the rom riser:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y3/woojo/DSCF1597.jpg

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y3/woojo/DSCF1598.jpg

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y3/woojo/DSCF1599.jpg

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y3/woojo/DSCF1600.jpg

On a happy note I at least got it to boot tonight. Only one bank of RAM works (other bank might be bad). It has a lowly 4MB but on the plus side it DOES work!

 

[Unknown_K]

Is that an overclocking device of some sort?

Spectrum Engineering rings a bell, oh yea they did the design for the Quadra 950 upgrade I have (68040/50mhz + 128K cache).

http://picasaweb.google.com/teozenios/MiscComputerGear#5067911244577461506

Look at the yellow writing on the top of the CPU.

So can you run a test program to see if anything runs faster? IS the RAM that works by chance faster then the ram that does not?

 

[kreats]

Yea that's just a overclocking device. Spectrum engineering evolved into newer tech I think.

This is pretty similar to the newer tech variable speed overdrive.

Not sure about this one, but with the VSO you can control the overclock in software which a nice feature that lets you find the stable limits of your system.

 

[wood_e]

Huh - that's interesting. I wonder if i should remove it.

I think last night i tried the RAM that I believe to be faulty without that device as well - no dice.

 

[wood_e]

So I'm going a little nuts with the paypal in my account and bought a motherboard with a video card and ethernet card off ebay. The best part was it had some huge RAM sticks on it.

Maybe I'll make a II into a IIfx with the spare mobo.

 

[wood_e]

Ok...

I updated my SE IV card to version 2.1 firmware and now it doesn't boot the HD I have attached to it anymore. It booted with version 1.65 in my Quadra 700 (800) and now it isn't even recognized.

Any help would be lovely. I need to get this working in the IIfx.