Missing IC's

[dimesional space]

I bought an Emulator II on Ebay and I picked it up today, and it's missing 3 or 4 small IC chips. One of the big ones was out of it's slot and the pins were bent a little, and I carefully put them back in place and inserted it back in it's slot.  Now 4 smaller chips are not in their slots and are missing.  Or did the EII come with a few blank IC slots? 

Upon power up I hear a flickering sound.  The same sound as they often use in horror movies when they zoom in on a light bulb, and it's making a flickering sound when turned on, or about to burn out for dramatic effect.  The LCD is flashing also and all the red lights are pegged completely on steady, accept for 1 or 2 of them.   Now before I put the chip back in the slot it did say insert Boot Disk, but the EII was still making the flickering sound.   Now I am not 100% positive my OS disk is any good.  But I don't think it's even getting to that point yet as far as reading the disk.  I could be a long ways away from that point is what I am thinking.  Now after the IC was put in it's place... I don't get any words whatsoever on the LCD.  Now the LCD just flashes really quickly like a small strobe light and there is no text whatsoever displayed.

Cosmetically the unit is in good shape accept for part of the label got wiped off with powerful cleaner from the previous owner.  I'll worry about a label later.   Now the bad news.... The unit was stored in an Anvil case that deteriorated badly.  All the foam had disintegrated in a tar like substance.  Now for some reason this unit looks good (seriously).  But on the corners underneath the unit there is like a tar glue (foam padding from the Anvil case) that I pulled off with my finger nail all around the edges. And then later further removed with alcohol and cotton pads.  It all came off really nicely.   Now after removing the cover I discoverd pieces of foam everywhere inside the unit.  A lot of it blew out of the corners and the rest came out with a new paint brush.  I need to get some canned air tomorrow and get the rest.  But huge chunks of deteriorated case foam came out of the EII top cover from it falling in there for God knows how long it was in the case being stored.  This couldn't have been good for the EII, but I assume it's not the first one to have had this happen to it.   There is also tar (foam) stuck on the rear jacks really good.  I'll have to get all that crap off also.  Although, new washers and nuts would be actually better and look good too.

Any suggestions and where can I get some chips for cheap?  Should I take pics or identify which ones I am missing?

Thank you if you can help out,

Dimensional Space

[Elmbeatz]

...
Should I take pics or identify which ones I am missing?
...

yes please!

[rtech]

So you were the one that outbid me on it! Hey can you check what mainboard rev. it has? I am tryingto figure out if there is a way to determine with the serial numbers. According to the previous owner of that eii the serial number is 12xx.  I want to know this do that hopefully in the future I can score a rev. 1 machine.


Thanks in advance.

[Elmbeatz]

there's rev 1 and rev 0.
rev 1 is good.

[Elmbeatz]

There are two big boards inside the EII. the left is the output- , the right is the digital board. The DIGITAL (right) board has got to be rev 1 in order to have mac communication (it's written on it, just look closely). A rev 0 board is also okay, if the RS232 interface has been retrofitted to rs422.

[rtech]

dimesional,

  No, problem with being out bided. I know how it is when one is pursuing a classic piece like the eii. I have been looking for the right one for quiet a while. I did not pursue this one hard because I wasn’t sure whether it had a rev. 0 or rev. 1 main board. I hope it turns out you have a rev.1 or a retrofitted rev. 0 so that you can have the option of hooking it up to a Mac. I hope you are able to fix yours. Take a picture of the chip that had the bent legs, if it is the Z80 processor chip it could be that it is defective. This is not the first time I hear that the chip would be the cause of the problems. The other thing is the chip socket. These things are very old and it could be a contact issue.

rtech

[esynthesist]

I am missing IC134/139/149 and 151.   I have heard from an expert that it's fine to be missing
IC134/139/149, but not 151.   How can I get one of those??

My EII+ is also missing those 4 ICs and it works fine, so that seems OK.

PS: if you have a memory board installed on top of the right digital main board, you have to take a look under that extension board to find the REV number of the digital board. It's on the border of the PCB, so you don't have to remove the memory board.

IC134 is sitting in the area of the RS422/RS232 circuits. Is a small piggyback board installed on top of IC134 ? If you have REV 0 and no small board installed over there, you will not have RS422 capabilities.