Parts haul in Wanganui

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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby Gibsaw on Tue Apr 26, 2011 10:58 pm

Tezza, let me get this straight. You have a IIe enhanced with slight retr0bright damage, but the m/b is from a platinum? (i.e. has only two RAM chips?)

And that's the one you're considering selling at some point?

I'm sure you can guess where I'm going with this since I have a non-working platinum. It would make diagnosing my platinum a lot easier to have a working example, albeit in a IIe "enhanced" case.
"dsakey" on trademe. Apple II's are my thing.
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby tezza on Wed Apr 27, 2011 9:19 am

Hi Delvin,

It is certainly easier to diagnose a problem when you have a working model to compare readings with, or swap things out. Having four working motherboards now I've been able to mix and match cases/boards/keyboards/limited chips/PSUs to get the configurations I want.

Here is the currrent situation:

    1 x fully working good-looking Apple Platinum (to keep)

    1 x fully working good looking Apple IIe (standard) (to keep)

    1 x almost working Apple IIe (enhanced) - just needs a keyboard driver chip. (possibly to sell once I get the driver chip). Case is ok, but the label on the lid has some retr0bright fogging. I have another lid which is a little more knocked around but has a good label which I could use instead of the fogged labelled one. It's more yellowed than the retr0bright case though so it looks a bit odd when the two are together.

    1 x working Platinum board presently missing a CPU and keyboard driver chip (to keep as a spare board in case I need to repair the show platinum)

    1 x rather skanky case and keyboard which I may dump in the future

So nothing to sell right at the moment and not a platinum board, as I want to keep it as a spare.

However, what is the problem with your platinum? I'm assuming whatever it is prevents the built-in diagnostic routine from running?
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby Gibsaw on Wed Apr 27, 2011 1:47 pm

tezza wrote:So nothing to sell right at the moment and not a platinum board, as I want to keep it as a spare.


Just to make sure I understood the situation properly and wasn't losing my mind... Your spare (working, but minus parts) platinum board WAS inside the IIe enhanced?

tezza wrote:However, what is the problem with your platinum? I'm assuming whatever it is prevents the built-in diagnostic routine from running?


It's a really fuzzy video out and doesn't even properly make characters. No beep at all.

I suspect it's a multiple failure. maybe a vid chip, plus a cpu, plus some RAM.
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby tezza on Wed Apr 27, 2011 1:55 pm

Gibsaw wrote:Just to make sure I understood the situation properly and wasn't losing my mind... Your spare (working, but minus parts) platinum board WAS inside the IIe enhanced?


Your mind is intact. That's correct. The spare platinum board WAS in the IIe enhanced case. Now that case actually contains a IIe enhanced motherboard from the Wanganui haul. The spare board is now in an antistatic bag :)

tezza wrote:However, what is the problem with your platinum? I'm assuming whatever it is prevents the built-in diagnostic routine from running?


Gibsaw wrote:It's a really fuzzy video out and doesn't even properly make characters. No beep at all.

I suspect it's a multiple failure. maybe a vid chip, plus a cpu, plus some RAM.


Yes, sounds like it's not firing. CPU, MMU, ROM, RAM or support chips..corruption on the data bus or addess lines. Hard to track down. I guess you've swapped out what you can yes? Is the clock ok? Can you see any characters at all, or is it just blocks and squares?
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby Gibsaw on Wed Apr 27, 2011 3:38 pm

tezza wrote:Can you see any characters at all, or is it just blocks and squares?


It's sometimes just blocks and squares. Sometimes it looks like characters, but never a beep, and always fuzzy and broken up.
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby tezza on Wed Apr 27, 2011 3:49 pm

Seeing as I've got the Apple gear out, if you like you can send the board to me and I can swap out what can be swapped out. I might be able to run some other checks also. I can't promise I'll find the problem and you'll need to pay for the postage back, but it might be worth a shot. If it's any of the major, socketed chips this should find the problem pretty quickly. If not, well at least some of the ICs would have been elimiated.

If you are interested let me know and I'll send you my address via private message on the forums.
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby Gibsaw on Thu Apr 28, 2011 12:15 pm

tezza wrote:Seeing as I've got the Apple gear out, if you like you can send the board to me and I can swap out what can be swapped out.


Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I have no problem paying for parts and things like that, but shipping chip after chip after chip from the USA at $25 ea for freight would get a little expensive if I was flying blind.
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby tezza on Thu Apr 28, 2011 12:44 pm

No worries. I'll drop you an email with my address.
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby tezza on Sun May 01, 2011 10:20 pm

Three of the four drives have been checked.

After cleaning, lubing the rails and adjusting the speed, all three work just fine! Bonus!!

There is a geniue Disk II drive (a mate for the one I have from the Europlus), An Apple Franklin drive (clone of the DiskII) and a IIe Unidisk.

The forth drive doesn't appear to be an Apple drive at all. Seems to be a standard 1/2 height 300 rpm model with its own PSU and a switch that selects between 40 and 80 tracks! If it works, it should make a good additional drive for the BBC or System 80/TRS 80 Model 1. I'll test it some time this week.

Now that I have both Apples going, I've started to write up the repairs. They both took a while so I'm doing it in parts. For those that are interested, the link is here.
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby Gibsaw on Mon May 02, 2011 11:57 am

tezza wrote:Now that I have both Apples going, I've started to write up the repairs.


Good write up. I'll be very interested to see the rest.
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby tezza on Tue May 03, 2011 10:41 pm

Gibsaw wrote:
tezza wrote:Now that I have both Apples going, I've started to write up the repairs.


Good write up. I'll be very interested to see the rest.


Here is Part 2. This explains what I THINK happened to my keyboard encoder chips (and why I need a couple of new ones)
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby tezza on Fri May 06, 2011 3:44 pm

..and here is Part 3. Pretty much a shotgun approach to diagnosis but it's left me with a very repairable board.
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby tezza on Sun May 08, 2011 8:57 pm

Part 4 is a short article on how I rearraged all this "stuff" to give me the keepers I wanted.
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby tezza on Wed May 11, 2011 10:31 am

And here is the Final Part. The Apple IIe project is now closed (apart from havening to find that one keyboard encoder IC from somewhere). I'll keep an eye on e_Bay.
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Re: Parts haul in Wanganui

Postby tezza on Sun Jun 05, 2011 7:12 am

A keyboard encoder IC has now been found so all the Apple IIes are now shiny and fresh!
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