Something that I just remembered...

[Apostrophe]

Hey,

Okay, for those of you who have read my post about a second Macintosh SE with a defective hard drive...

I had forgotten to mention this...that while I was running it from the floppy disk, I had to go downstairs to get something. When I got back up, the SE displayed a warning about an illegal action. And then I got a completely black screen, except for a sad mac in the center of the screen and a series of numbers, much like Superpantoufle's problem (except that mine's a black screen w/sad mac, and not black screen w/happy mac).

I didn't mention it at the time because I simply attributed it to the lack of a hard drive. But then I read Superpantoufle's post and the subsequent answers, about it maybe being a logic board problem. I had a look at the logic board, and there are no visible defects at all. I read what Superpantoufle's answerers said about RAM...do you think that just re-seating the RAM would do it?

Luckily, I saw several Miniscribe 20MB hard drives on the Web that seem to be what I'm looking for (I want the original 20-year-old hard drive, not some modern one). It's 50-pin, right?

I'm slightly mystified with all of this...is there a chance that a working HD and a RAM-re-seating will cure the black screen w/sad mac?

-Apostrophe

 

[MrMacPlus]

Are you using composite SIMMs? Parity? Or is it still the original 256k SIMMS?

 

[Apostrophe]

TetrisMaster--sorry, but I have no idea. :-/

I just now re-aligned the floppy drive. I also re-seated the RAM.

And I get the exact same thing.

Here are pics:










In addition to that, the floppy drive will not accept floppy disks! I meet an 'invisible barrier' that prevents the floppy from going in all the way!

Any ideas? :?:

-Apostrophe

EDIT: I turned the power off, held the Option key, and turned the power back on. I remembered that it would do something, but I forgot what it was...anyway, after the startup bong it showed a full, gray screen! Then it went back to the error code after a few seconds. Doesn't Option force the Mac to read what's in the floppy drive or something?

 

[equill]

Is there already a floppy disk in the FDD, half-digested or not? If holding down the mouse-button at startup does not disgorge a floppy disk, using the paperclip magic wand in the eject-hole should do the trick. Either that or your FDD is in rigor mortis.

The 0003 tells you, in addition to the SE's having a PITB (where B here means belly), that it flunked its byte-write memory test, and the 1000 identifies the bad chip (not card). 'Bad' here could mean the seating or the socket or the card's edge-connector. You need some canned air to blow out the RAM sockets, one or two sets of paired RAM cards, and a pencil-eraser to clean the edge-connectors.

Option at start does indeed invoke a choice of startup volume, but when the choice is one at most I have no idea where that will get you. Your description of your hardware problems makes your software troubles irrelevant for the moment. Getting to raster (grey screen) followed by black screen and swearwords about its RAM is your first hurdle to pass.

de

 

[Apostrophe]

Thanks for your response, equill--

No, the floppy drive is completely empty. I think it may need replacing...

And after a bit of research, I understand more about all this, and I simply realized that Option had no effect because I removed the internal HD (which is non-working anyway) and the FDD is stuck!

Since there's no startup device at all, it had no choice but to go back to the error screen.

So I'll get a replacement hard drive and floppy drive, install them, have a look at the chips on the logic board, and if a blast of air doesn't help, I'll simply replace the logic board.

And, of course, I'll keep the broken version of each component I replace so that I can still work on them and, hopefully, fix them.

BTW, I think the 3 may also mean that the SE performed an 'illegal instruction'. That's what many error-decoding websites told me, in addition to the fact that the SE had flashed up a dialog box beforehand informing me of an illegal instruction.

So I'll do all of what I listed above, and I'll just hope that a good HDD and a permanent OS installation will help. And, of course, I'll try and track down the chip that the error code identifies.

Thanks equill,

-Apostrophe

 

[elbaroni]

I think option only lets you choose a startup volume on a modern mac. The grey screen might indicate that it was testing the RAM, which could be what the option key does. This only happens when it's turned on from cold, not when it's rebooted. For memory...

 

[equill]

Error codes under SM do have to be considered alongside when SM appears as well as that it appears, so you could be on the money with an alternative. The rudimentary POST of an SE has long since passed by the time of raster-arrival, and the immediate descent into the abyss after raster, which should have been followed by mouse-tracking, Happy Mac, splash screen and so on argues a software failure. Hence the illegal instruction error, perhaps, because whatever the system was reading was incomprehensible to it. However, the only software in your SE sounds to be firmware, busy driving Start Manager. If your firmware is bung, it suggests that your ROM is bung too, and another candidate for the large cleanup broom.

Your way may be long and convoluted. Best of luck, nonetheless, and you will enjoy it when you conquer.

de