Hi,
I've acquired a Mac IIfx which wasn't turning on. After replacing the 2 batteries it powered up - apart from with a strange problem.
Instead of the startup tone there is a garbled static noise, sometimes the startup tone, and sometimes the chimes of death.
So far I have reseated everything on the mobo, cleaned the ram and rom simm contacts but with no luck. The furthest it got was to start booting up and reading from the HD before it spontaneously restarted and then screeched with static at me.
Has anyone got any ideas or heard of this strange behaviour before?
Thanks,
James.
Are the metal aluminum capacitors leaking (do they look wet around the base, noticable if there is dust)? Bad capacitors will cause problems like that.
You probably know this already, but just in case, the RAM for the IIfx was quite unique and only worked on the IIfx and one of the early printers--not on any other computer, so there's not a chance that the previous owner installed some wrong RAM? I don't remember if the pin count and notches were unique too.
Also in case you don't know, that ROM card is highly sought after by SE/30 owners because it's "clean," and if it's the correct RAM, it has value too, so if it's the motherboard that's irrepairable, then your purchase is not a total loss. I've sold the ROM and RAM from a couple IIfx's before and got much more for them alone than what I payed for the whole computer.