8600/300 not booting.

[crazyben]

I recently acquired 8600/300. It powers on but doesn’t have chime or video. Any idea where should I start to troubleshoot this. I did replace the PRAM battery. Last 2 pictures are of the processor.

 

[CD5150]

Try 2 things. If you have a spare PCI GPU (like a Mach 64 or Rage 128 for Mac) try booting with a graphics card installed. DB15 can be weird at times. It could also be picky/bad/dirty RAM. Remove the RAM modules, clean all of the RAM slots (cotton swabs soaked in 91% rubbing alcohol works fine), clean the module's contacts, and reseat the RAM.

 

[crazyben]

I will have to check if have pci gpu. I think I have one in G3. I did remove the all the RAMs cleaned with WD-40 contact cleaner. No change. I even did cuda reset.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

I'm thinking if the dial things on the CPU card adjust frequency, and someone has played with them, it could affect the ability to boot.

 

[joshc]

Try the contact cleaner in every slot, reseat everything. Contact cleaner inside every socket and on every SIMM/cards + scrubbing with a Q-tip every edge pin connector.

Agree with @MrFahrenheit the little knobs in the CPU card are probably important. Having a spare CPU card does help when diagnosing these machines.

CUDA is weird too, I think these machines are CUDA. Have to reset before you might get a chime/video.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Try the contact cleaner in every slot, reseat everything. Contact cleaner inside every socket and on every SIMM/cards + scrubbing with a Q-tip every edge pin connector.

Agree with @MrFahrenheit the little knobs in the CPU card are probably important. Having a spare CPU card does help when diagnosing these machines.

CUDA is weird too, I think these machines are CUDA. Have to reset before you might get a chime/video.

The issue is compounded with this being a Kansas board. From what I’ve read you cannot use earlier CPU cards in a Kansas board, you must use Kansas generation and above only.

Finding a Kansas + CPU card could be difficult, unless it’s another accelerator.

 

[joshc]

Interesting. My knowledge of this era of Power Macs is pretty limited I will admit.

 

[obsolete]

That's a Powerlogix PowerForce G3, looks like 400MHz based on the sticker, which was top of the line in its day. I did some digging on archive.org and found the chart for the frequency setting knobs: https://web.archive.org/web/20010627114626/http://www.powerlogix.com/support/freqchart.html
I couldn't tell you which knob is A, B, or C, though.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

That's a Powerlogix PowerForce G3, looks like 400MHz based on the sticker, which was top of the line in its day. I did some digging on archive.org and found the chart for the frequency setting knobs: https://web.archive.org/web/20010627114626/http://www.powerlogix.com/support/freqchart.html
I couldn't tell you which knob is A, B, or C, though.

Great find! I tried looking it up last night and couldn’t find that.

I’d recommend starting with 50mhz bus and 300mhz cpu clock just to see if it boots.

 

[crazyben]

I tested the above card in 7500 and it booted fine at 200Mhz. 7500 has SoNNeT Crescendo PCI G3 500 MHz Upgrade Card. When test this card on 8600 i am getting nothing. I did do Cuda reset each time i swapped cards.