----- Original Message -----
From: "Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
To: "classiccmp" <classiccmp at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 5:17 PM
Subject: Repairing Mac128K board - memory problems
Hi, All,
A list member recently sent me a broken Mac128 logic board. I quickly
found a bad solder joint from a previous repair where one of the
original 64Kbit DRAMs was replaced with a socket, but I'm still having
issues.
The Mac does "bong" and I do get a "Sad Mac" with a hex code. It
claims it's the same chip that is now socketed (G8). If that DRAM is
installed, I get "Mac in Jail" bars. If that DRAM is removed, I get
black pixels where that chip was. The other odd symptom is, between
the bars, a semi-regular sparse grid of on-pixels. It's not a perfect
pattern across the screen; it's mostly on the right side, and not
always top to bottom in a column. It does look regular, as if it's
every 64 bytes or some other power-of-2, and 5% of the pixels blink as
if they are changing in software.
I know that Apple-branded DRAMs of this era are dodgy. I could just
clip them all out and replace them with fresh, *tested* chips (I have
a DIP DRAM tester), but I am concerned that the fault is elsewhere
since a known-good DRAM always produces a stuck-on bit (the "jail
bars"). That smells to me like a bad gate upstream of the RAM field.
Looking at the available schematics, unbuffered DOUT D0-D15 go several
places - a pair of '244s to buffer the data bus, a pair of '166 shift
registers for video data out, a pair of '161s for sound data out, and
a 16R8 PAL named ASG that appears to be related to sound and diskette
PWM. The DIN side of the data bus connects to the '244 bus buffers,
the CPU, the ROMs, the IWM, the 6522 VIA, and the Z8530 SCC. I would
think that if that side of the bus had a stuck bit, the CPU would be
fetching bad data from the ROMs, so there wouldn't even be a Sad Mac.
I can do some catastrophic repair by blindly pulling all the RAM and
replacing it, and I can even pull the CPU and socket it so I can stick
my Fluke 9010A on the board and do some serious memory tests and
exercise the bus and poke at it with an oscilloscope. What I'm asking
for at this point is any information that can help me target my
efforts. It seems like this sort of fault would have been common in
the day, but mostly when I google "Sad Mac" or "jail bars", I get
stuff about replacing individual RAM chips or changing SIMMs in an
SE/30.
So anyone have any advice that could help me not remove and replace
320 solder joints on a multi-layer board? Yes, I can do it, but it's
a lot of time to do it well. I'd just like to get this old Mac
working with an original board (I have working 512K boards, but the
point is to have an Original Mac in time for display next January).
Thanks for any suggestions,
-ethan
Ethan,
my first move would be to get rid of the socket!
It is extremely difficult to solder a socket to a multilayer board, unless
it is part of the original flow solder process, and if some of the holes are
not through plated (or have lost the plating during previous repairs), the
socket will often only make contact with the tracks on one side of the
board.
I would remove the socket, and directly solder in the chip, taking special
care (magnifying glass at least), to ensure that the solder has flowed
correctly on both sides of the board.
This used to be a problem on a number of pieces of equipment that I used to
look after, and I often found myself repairing faults that had been
generated by the use of IC sockets for repairs.
Jim.