exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Thanks!

stephen_usher wrote: 03 May 2023 17:38 Something slightly retro worked upon this afternoon, but not computing.

I've been working on my Dad's car getting it presentable for the funeral tomorrow.

I do hope everything goes well tomorrow as well, having been through my own Dad's funeral in November, so I can fully appreciate what you're dealing with.

The car thing is a funny one, we sold my Dad's car on, but when they came to collect it, the damn thing started, albeit from a booster battery, and drove onto the low loader. I'd never expected that after sitting for 7 years in the garage.

I hope you can use it with pride tomorrow, especially with the connected ownership of you both.

Take care.

Having "fun" with a Mac SE/30 today...

I bought four new 4MB SIMMs from eBay for the machine but they don't work, sort of.

• Put all four SIMMs into bank A: fails POST, corrupt screen.
• Put all four SIMMs into bank B and known good in bank A: fails POST, corrupt screen.
• Replace one of the known good 1MB SIMMs with one of the new SIMMs: System boots.
• Replace more than one known good 1MB SIMM with any of the new ones: fails POST, corrupt screen.

Test 3 suggests that the lower 1MB at least of all four SIMMs is working correctly.

I'm puzzled, especially as the machine fails to POST with the new RAM in the upper bank and so shouldn't be used for the display etc.

Decided to check A10 (pin 19) on the SIMMs so fitted them into bank B. Put the scope probe on pin 19 of the nearest SIMM, switched on... The machine booted... and continues to boot fine.

It's having a laugh.

stephen_usher wrote: 07 May 2023 15:53 Decided to check A10 (pin 19) on the SIMMs so fitted them into bank B. Put the scope probe on pin 19 of the nearest SIMM, switched on... The machine booted... and continues to boot fine.

It's having a laugh.

Oh, how odd. Having been through RAM issues with my Classic that traced back to a single bad resistor, the weirdness you're having seems about normal!!

I reflowed the solder on the SIMMs' pads. I think it was a connection issue with the PCBs being slightly thinner than the originals.

Works reliably now.

Top tip: Don't try to use flammable freeze spray to try to stop the sticky bumper on an old Conner hard drive from being sticky...

I just tried to revive the original Falcon IDE drive so that I could attempt to image it from a Linux box. Sprayed the freeze spray under the lowest platter, where the bumper hides after moving the heads out of the way and now the platter won't spin properly and it's still sticking the heads.

Oh well. The drive was toast anyway.

@stephen_usher will a bath in IPA help the old drive?

At least it didn’t catch fire :lol:

Disk flambé. Lovely!

Nobody wants sticky bumpers...