IIsi ROM SIM gives death chime in my SE/30s

[Von]

A couple of weeks ago a IIsi ROM SIM appeared on Ebay with buy it now and I promptly grabbed it for my SE/30. The SIM arrived in an anti-static bag and was nicely packed. After discharging the CRT in my SE/30 I pulled my recently recapped motherboard out and swapped out the IIfx that had been happily running with 80 MB of RAM. WHen I reassembled the fired it up with no hard drive attached, I got the death chime and my heart sank. I then pulled out my other SE/30 that is running 20MB of RAM and a stock SE/30 ROM sim and installed the IIsi SIM (this mobo has also been recapped) and fired it up and got the death chime again. I am I now the owner of a dead IIsi SIM or does anyone have any suggestions on other avenues to try? The contacts on the SIM are spanking clean so I don't think there is an issue there. Being that it a 32-bit clean sim, it shouldn't matter how much ram is installed right? I can try booting it up this weekend with just 4 MB of ram however if I do this, does it matter which bank gets filled? I also have a 3rd motherboard that I can try however that one has not been recapped.

THx

~Von

 

[porter]

I can't follow what you are saying, is the IIfx a red herring or an essential part of the story?

Why put an IIsi ROM in an SE/30 in the first place?

 

[LCGuy]

porter: The reason why he put the IIsi ROM into the SE/30 is because the IIsi ROM is 32 bit clean, whereas the SE/30 ROM is not. Without a IIsi or IIfx ROM, an SE/30 requires MODE32 or the Apple 32 Bit System Enabler to run in 32 bit mode, and can never run System 7.6.

 

[porter]

...and can never run System 7.6.

Forget 7.6, it can run AU/X. Also should be able to to 128Mb still with original ROMs.

 

[LCGuy]

Yeah...I personally wouldn't run System 7.6 on an SE/30, but its important to some people, hence why the IIsi/IIfx ROM upgrade is so popular.

 

[JRL]

I think a better idea would be removing/unplugging the hard drive, all of the memory, any installed cards, etc. and just try to boot the Macintosh SE/30 with the bare motherboard and ROM SIMM. If you get a normal display, the SIMM should be fine, while one of your components (i.e: RAM) could be at fault.

Also, make sure you plugged in the ROM SIMM correctly; if you don't, you're gonna get a death chime and nothing else.

 

[porter]

but its important to some people, hence why ...

they bastardise IIsi or IIfx machines.
I would consider a IIfx far more worthy than an SE/30. Just remember A/UX has custom drivers for all that esoteric IIfx hardware.

 

[Von]

I think a better idea would be removing/unplugging the hard drive, all of the memory, any installed cards, etc. and just try to boot the Macintosh SE/30 with the bare motherboard and ROM SIMM. If you get a normal display, the SIMM should be fine, while one of your components (i.e: RAM) could be at fault.
Also, make sure you plugged in the ROM SIMM correctly; if you don't, you're gonna get a death chime and nothing else.

THx for the suggestion JLR. With the IIsi ROM installed minus all RAM and the HD I still get the chime of death. The display looks like the early SimasiMac shown here: http://www.biwa.ne.jp/~shamada/fullmac/repairEng.html#SimasiMac I also swapped out the battery to see if that made any difference and it did not. Unfortunately my IIsi has its ROM on the motherboard so I can't test it in my IIsi.

When swap my stock SE/30 or the IIfx ROM sim in, both work fine.

 

[JDW]

When swap my stock SE/30 or the IIfx ROM sim in, both work fine.

Von I really hate to say it, but such is strong evidence that: (1) You have a bad IIsi ROM, and (2) the EBAY seller who sold it possibly misled you. Did the listing say it was tested? Was there a non-DOA guarantee? Did you question the seller extensively prior to purchase? I'm not saying you did anything wrong at all Von. I am suggesting though that you were sold a bad ROM. And since it shipped in an anti-static bag and since you seem to know your way around the internals of old Macs enough to not zap circuitry to death, my guess is that it was bad before it shipped to you.

Now, to those of you who think the IIsi or IIfx ROMs are only about "32-bit clean" and running System "7.6," you are wrong. For one thing, the IIsi operates the same as the IIfx ROM except for the fact that there are no horizontal lines at startup with the IIsi ROM. That is "difference enough" for some IIfx ROM owners to seek out a IIsi ROM to try. That was my reasoning, which is why I now own both ROMs. In addition, with either ROM, you can run OS 8.1 which won't work on the stock SE/30 ROM. What's so special about that, you ask? Because the networking files that come with 8.1 allow your SE/30 to network with even the newest OS X Macs. And by borrowing some of those networking files from OS 8.1, you can then get 7.6.1 and 7.5.5 to network with your OS X Mac too.

Anyway, I'm sorry about this situation, Von. What a let-down that must have been to get something you'd long been waiting for only to discover it was a bad Apple! >

 

[LCGuy]

Interesting, I never knew about the horizontal lines - I always thought it was done to make the SE/30 a 32 bit clean system. I've read on Gamba before about people running OS 8.1 on these systems, but I never thought people actually did it seriously, since a 16 Mhz 68030 is probably not the best CPU for running such an OS.

 

[JDW]

...running OS 8.1 on these systems, but I never thought people actually did it seriously, since a 16 Mhz 68030 is probably not the best CPU for running such an OS.

On the stock SE/30 CPU, OS 8.x is slow due to the interface tweaks Apple put into it, which really are only viewable anyway if you have a color or grayscale monitor. It was because of this sluggishness that I invested a considerable amount of my time to figure out how I could move the networking magic of OS 8 over to speedy System 7. The end result is what you read in the link I provide in my previous post, which allows your System 7.5.5 or 7.6.1 SE/30 to connect to the latest OS Macs (which is normally not possible when trying to link to OS 10.4 and higher). No matter what CPU you have, the GUI of System 7 is much faster than OS 8.x, and of course System 6 is on order of many times faster than System 7 or 8.

Even so, I still love ever more speed, so I sought out accelerators for the SE/30. I currently own two: (1) 40MHz Daystar Turbo 040 and (2) DiiMO 50MHz 030. You can read more about those cards in the text descriptions under my Flickr photos and by searching older threads here in the Compact Mac section of 68kMLA.

Nevertheless, you don't really need an accelerator to run System 7 on the stock SE/30, especially if you don't get on the web at all. RAM and a fast 7200rpm or 10,000rpm hard disk go a long way in boosting the speed of a stock CPU SE/30.

 

[porter]

The System 8 UI looks absolutely awful in monochrome. The System 7 one was finely tuned to be minimalist and work on small monitors. The System 8 UI assumes only madmen run monochrome.

 

[Bunsen]

only madmen run monochrome.

And your point is?