[CCTECH] AT&T PC7300 / UnixPC is ill! :( - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

12 Jun 2002

...
  -----Original Message-----
 From: Andy Berg [mailto:groovelists@yahoo.com] 
...
  Today, I acquired a PC7300. Alas, the poor fellow
 seems to have a rather large malady of some type. I've 
It will make you feel better to know that they're very sturdy.

...
  Evidently, before one of these machines first boots
 up, it displays a few rectangular characters in the
 upper left hand corner of the screen. It then proceeds
 to its boot screen. (And then OS loading and whatnot 
Yes.  The rectangles come from ROM, the boot screen comes
...
 from the on-disk loader. (I think)  It's really
trying to  boot, from the sound of it.

Put a diagnostic disk in the floppy drive and see what happens.
If you've got not diagnostic disk, that's your first problem ;)

...
  if all is well.) My machine just sits there and
 displays rectangle after rectangle after rectangle. No
 boot screen ever appears. The machine was working when
 put away for storage when put away a few months ago,
 but refused to boot when it came out. I guess that
 leaves it at the point that I got it. :) 
Chances are that it's the disk.  You'll find that it's a 
normal ST-506 (Is it 506? -- "MFM") disk.  If you find that
the disk really is toasted, you can get pretty much any 
half-height drive and replace it.  They came with Miniscribe
lots of the time.  I've replaced them with Seagate and Rodime
drives without trouble.  Anything else is also likely to 
work.

...
  I managed, with a bit of yanking about, to get it
 disassembled, down to the motherboard, as per the 3b1
 FAQ. I got some of the big dust out and reseated all
 of the seatable chips. There didn't seem to be any
 major damage anywhere... one of the fans had a cut
 line which I repaired, but there was no evidence of
 any type of overheating. Most socketed chips were 
Careful there.  There was a procedure somewhere describing
how to disconnect the thermister from the fans, in order
to _keep_ the system from overheating ;)  Make sure that 
line was one of the lines that powers the fan.

Of course, my system, and my fiancee's system, are both
fine without having had that done.

...
  reseated, everything was powered on once again, and
 the same thing seems to happen. :( The rectangles
 appear, the floppy drive sits and spins, and the hard
 drive spins up and sits there. There is a loud
 beep/click type sound, which I'd figured to be the
 heads unparking themselves. When the hard drive cable
 is removed, the machine freezes at one rectangle, so
 was thinking it could be something along those lines. 
As I was saying, it could just be a bad disk.

...
  think I can report are that the four indicator LEDs
 are at a constant on state - could also be normal for
 this part of the boot cycle for this machine, too. 
I think so, but my memory is fuzzy.

Chris

Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL

"Confutatis maledictus, flammis acribus addictus, voca me cum 
benedictis.  Oro supplex et acclinis, cor contritunt quasi 
cinis, gere curarn mei finis." -Requiem