Help diagnosing boot issue SWTPC 6800

[Nick Allen]

Well... Finally figured it out!  Found a lose solder blob shorting 2 
pins on one of the motherboard ICs.  That explains why I've been going 
crazy trying to figure out why it's been so random and intermittent.  
Thanks everyone for chiming in, and helping out!


On 1/1/2018 6:12 PM, Nick Allen wrote:
> I spoke too soon, I think simply cleaning the contacts rattled a short 
> and dumb luck made it boot the first time.  By pressing the 
> fatherboard I can see characters corrupt when running a program, guess 
> I need to do some more digging to find out exactly where and why this 
> is happening.
>
>
> On 1/1/2018 5:34 PM, Nick Allen wrote:
>> cleaning the connector pins with a brass brush solved the issue, 
>> thanks everyone!!
>>
>>
>> On 1/1/2018 5:03 PM, Nick Allen wrote:
>>> Thanks for the tips everyone!  I can confirm power is GOOD, and the 
>>> problem persists even without the RAM installed (Just CPU and MP-C 
>>> or MP-S board).  I am going to clean the buss connectors and see if 
>>> it helps!
>>>
>>> On 1/1/2018 12:32 PM, Nick Allen wrote:
>>>> Hey everyone, Happy New Years!  I am thankful for an active 
>>>> community that enjoys helping each other learn, and today I am 
>>>> coming with an ask for help.
>>>>
>>>> I have a SWTPC 6800 and ADM3A terminal, I can get it to boot, and 
>>>> when it boots it will continue to boot for several hours. But 
>>>> getting it to successfully boot takes upwards of 100 power OFF and 
>>>> ON cycles.  The other 99 times, I get a continuous stream of random 
>>>> ASCII characters (see video link below). It's my first time seeing 
>>>> this type of issue that happens intermittently, and wondering if 
>>>> anyone has any insights in what might be causing this.  I suspect 
>>>> its a faulty IC on the Processor board that resets or controls the 
>>>> OS reset, will need to deep dive and diagnose, but thought I would 
>>>> ask for some direction first.
>>>>
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci4vhPn-3PE
>>>>
>>>> Thanks in advance!
>>>>
>>>> -Nick
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>