Repairing an EIII in the UK

[Gordon]

Hello all,

Please accept my apologies if this has been asked many times before, but I didn't find the answer in the archive... Does anyone know where I can get an EIII repaired in the UK? Mine tries to load from floppy and shows the message "Booting from v2.42" but then stops dead and leaves a black square where the "B" should be. The internal SCSI drive appears to be completely dead.

All help much appreciated.

Many thanks,

Gordon.

[lubb]

If you have EIII OS 2.42 diskette, try to boot from it. (From your description I cannot fully understand if you have already tried...)

[Gordon]

Hello,

Yes, I have the OS 2.42 diskette, and that's the one I'm trying.

Gordon.

[Elmbeatz]

Did your EIII come with that disk, or have you got it from some other source?
(Hardware - specific data is saved on disks, so IF you got a disk that has been written by another EIII, something might go wrong)..

[Gordon]

Hello,

From another source... I bought the diskette from Rob at the Emulator Archive. I think that it had always booted before from the internal drive, which warms up when the EIII is plugged in, but doesn't rotate, so I guess is dead.

Gordon.

[Elmbeatz]

That's bad.
You should try to locate another floppy disk.
Where are you located?

EDIT: Oh, UK just saw it 

[lubb]

What about trying to disconnect the internal hard drive, and then boot from the diskette..? Perhaps some mess on the SCSI bus caused by the faulty hard drive...

[Gordon]

That's a good idea, and easy to try. I doubt that it will work :-) but it's worth a shot.

Thank you.

[dr.c]

This is false. Datas of the disquette and the disk are completely separated.
You should take off the microcontroler board (the top one), remove the memory simms, put them vback, put the card back and retry. Maybe just a bad contact on the memory.

[Gordon]

I had thought of this, but was worried about blowing a SIMM with static. But it occurs to me that we have a grounded bench where I work, so I think that I'll now try this. Many thanks everyone for the suggestions; please keep them coming. The EIII is healthier now than it was a couple of weeks ago, and who knows... we might get it back to full health.

Gordon.

[Gordon]

Hello all,

I opened the EIII again and, on a proper static-protected engineering bench, removed all the RAM, air-dusted everything (the contacts were very clean) and reinserted it, but backwards, just to see if this made a difference. No change.

At this point, the PSU started to complain about the dead HDD, refusing to power up when it was connected. I installed a new 45MB SCSI drive from a long-gone Mac, and everything was returned to normal.

So... On power up, the screen says "Firmware v1.00, OS2.42 Booting from floppy disk" and stops after the five 'clicks' of the floppy drive (I am assuming after five tracks are read, or after the first track is tried five times) and places a black square over the "B" of "Booting". With my other OS2.42 floppy disk, it exhibits the same behaviour, but places black squares over most of the characters on the screen.

So near, but so far. Clearly, the processor is running and the system recognises the OS on the floppy. Could it be a firmware/OS incompatibility? Any other thoughts, guys'n'gals? It's beginning to drive me mad!

Many thanks,

Gordon.

[lubb]

I also faced non-booting issue with my EIII Rack, and resolved it by taking everything out (flat cables, PSU cables, boards, memory chips), and cleaned all contacts with a contact cleaner... Now works flawlessly...

[Gordon]

Arghh!! Maybe that's the next stage. Is there anything to be especially wary of? Cracking ribbon cables? Breaking pins? Anything like that?

Gordon.

[Gordon]

Hello chaps,

A result, of sorts...

I have disassembled, dusted, pressed chips firmly into place, replaced the HDD and reassembled the EIII, and there are no longer any hashed screen messages on boot up. It now simply says:

SYSTEM ERROR !   UND

Any ideas? Does anyone have a service manual with the error list?

It says this for both my v2.42 floppies, so I'm wondering if the next stage is a new floppy drive, or whether people think that I've scrambled my diskettes. (My firmware is v1.00, by the way.)

I think that we might nearly be there!

Thanks as always,

Gordon.

[midipuppies]

Hi Gordon, I think that one means HD incompatibility. I have had the misfortune of seeing it  before. Try another HD?

Jay