Mysterious simasimac after replacing SE/30 PRAM battery

[rplacd]

All – I'm genuinely flummoxed by this. Have any of y'all seen this happen before? I took a working, recapped SE/30 without a PRAM battery, installed a new PRAM battery off Amazon, and boom – simasimac on boot, no chime, even after waiting for RAM check to complete. Removed the PRAM battery, and I'm stuck with the same simasimac. Would y'all know what might have happened here, or how inserting a PRAM battery in an SE/30 that previously worked might lead to a simasimac?



To make sure I hadn't accidentally unseated a ROM or RAM SIMM, I removed all of the SIMMs, soaked them and the logic board in vinegar to get rid of any corrosion, washed it, and dried it. No change. 

Attached are shots of the top and bottom of the logic board, if that would help. They're a little blurry. (Some IPA is still trying on the top shot, so it looks a little bit wet.)

 

[dochilli]

Do you hear a chime? If not it can be a ROM problem. Or some corrosion around the battery area and something broke when you pressed the new battery in. First step could be to check the traces of the ROM.

 

[Daniël]

Yes, inspect the area and traces around the battery socket. I'd also suggest pulling out the video ROM chip, and reseating it after cleaning the socket. I have seen people get that Simasimac with bad RAM, do you happen to have spare compatible 30 pin SIMMs you could test with? I'd suggest doing that too if possible, just to rule out the RAM.

 

[marcelv]

one of the clips of your rom socket is broken off, so the rom is not held in place correctly

 

[rplacd]

one of the clips of your rom socket is broken off, so the rom is not held in place correctly

It looked like that was it – thanks so much for catching what I missed! I used a few rubber bands to apply pressure to the ROM SIMM like so for a quick fix:

 

Thanks @dochilli, @Daniël Oosterhuis as well for the leads – there actually did turn out to be a little gunk in the socket as well.