Holy friggin crap. Totally jacked EII [Fiixed!!!]

[xxxdavidmaysxxx]

Okay. Today I got an EII. It was a great deal even though it was a little tempermental. I had random distortion and the "infinate" note, BUT it actually booted up. So I looked trough back-posts and decided I needed to take out and clean EVERY IC in the machine. So I did (except under the power supply). In the process I broke a pin off of two chips, but soldered them back on to where I believe they would make contact (I'll list them in a minute) so I put the top back on, blah blah blah. And to my extreme dismay:


Now it just does this. The came the dry heaves. All the led's light up at once. No sounds emanate from the disk drives ( so I'm assuming the main CPU is not working). The two IC's I had to repair was "IC33" on the memory option board (This is not the issue, it was powered on with it and it worked fine) and "IC80" on the digital board. I switched it with an identical one on the board and same result. Did I do something wrong? I cleaned the chips with Isopropyl alchohol and a toothbrush. I made sure to take extra care with the EPROMS. Ugh can anyone help? I think I will take out and re seat EVERY single IC AGAIN tonight. I swear I'm gonna be dreaming about the procedure all night after its done. I'm braindead now. Thanks

EDIT:Holy crap. Photobucket is spitting in my face. http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac145/xxxdavidmaysxxx/IMG_0017.jpg

Hopefully that works. If not just image half of the display filled with black boxes and all the leds lit. I'm to tired to fiddle with it, sorry!

[xxxdavidmaysxxx]

Will someone please at least give an opinion. I'm very upset over this, I'm woried I've completely ruined the entire thing. Could I have screwed it up with static electricity even though my arms were on the chassis the whole time? UGH I HATE THIS.

[JMP]

Man..., you heard the saying if it ain't broke don't fix it...? I know that doesn't help now but get it to a qualified tech before doing anything else.

The infinate note was likely a simple key contact cleaning issue. Even if the PSU is working it should be overhauled simply to prolong the life of it.

This is unlikley to be the cause of your problems... but make sure you have plugged the cable connectors from the top panel PCB's to the right sockets on the bottom board. I once plugged mine the wrong way round and it understandably went very wierd on me.   

[midipuppies]

There is a good chance that you fried the IC (s) when you soldered them back together by overheating them.
Check all of the chips that you pulled and put back in to make sure that every pin is seated correctly with no bent pins. (Only if you feel ok with it.)
It is a common mistake.
If you are not too confident with this kind of stuff I advise you to leave any kind of service work to a pro.
Things can go from bad to worse real quick with these machines and parts are not easy to come by.
I'm not trying to preach but like JMP just said, you need to get it into a proper tech to minimize the risk of permanent and irreprible damage.
Good luck.

[xxxdavidmaysxxx]

I know I know. I was just so excited to get it up and running....

I went through and re seated them all today, same issue. And I only soldered two, one was a memory chip on the expansion board and one on the digital board, but I swapped it out with an identical one from the other board, no difference, and I tried the memory chip like it was when it worked so its not the issue. One guy is saying the main EPROM is jacked. Man this sucks. I hope its just the EPROM, because I assume someone can just write me another from the binaries on the Yahoo users group. Any tips on finding someone, because I really don't wanna buy the equipment myself. Then I can try maybe replacing the Z80..... If all else fails, I'll take it to a tech, or sell it for parts.

[midipuppies]

I'm not understanding the swapping of the IC thing. Do you have another EII that you are swapping out from? If not, swapping IC's back and forth from different components will not help you at all. If one is bad, then it's bad. Know what I mean? Putting it someplace else in the unit changes nothing.
I really think you should get it looked at by a tech before you jump to conclusions.

[xxxdavidmaysxxx]

Oh no no no. I'm not swapping random ones. Just for the purposes of testing i took an Identical one from the output side (not the digital board) and put it in. I'll find a replacement and put it back in its place when I get one (and if I can get it to work). And yeah. I'm not going to do anymore to it. Unless I can get an EPROM which will be a simple swap. Otherwise I'll just stay out of it.

I'm sorry I may have totally screwed up a wonderful peice of equipment. While I'm sure everyone on here is shaking their heads and thinking "what an idiot", well I'm sorry. I'll do what I can to help fix it (and not screw it up anymore) because I know these are rare, and worth saving, and I won't commit anymore sins on it than I have already have. I know some chips are relatively easy to find, and some are absolutely terrible to find and expensive as hell to boot. :p

[Futureman]

From my personal experience, eeproms are pretty indestructible.. I'd doubt it is that.

When people talk about 'reseating' IC's.. that does not mean pulling them out completely, and putting them back in.. This is a good way to bend and mess up pins.

The easiest way to do it is to pry them up a few mm with a small screwdriver (Jewlers etc) then push it back down.. so, in effect, the IC rises a few mm, then lowers a few mm.. this (Hopefully) cleans the contacts between the IC and the IC mount.

It could be that you maybe put in an IC backwards.. check 100% that you didn't do that... innocent mistakes happen. Notice how all the IC's are generally arranged in a certain way with the cutout in the IC in a certain place.

It is also really probable that you bent one pin on one IC somehere.. ie, squashed it to the underside of the IC.. this will be hard to check for unless you pull each and every IC out.. ughhh.. then there is a risk that you'll do it again. hence thats why you don't remove IC's randomly.

Good luck.

[Futureman]

Regarding the potentially bent pins to the underside of IC, you  ' m a y ' be able to see it if you look really close to each and every leg of each and every IC..

Try for that first.

[Elmbeatz]

I often tell people to reseat the ICs.
Well I MEANT it that way - pull them completely out and put them back in.
When I did this to my EII (nothing went wrong) it worked like it was reborn.

I'm really sorry that you didn't succeed. I don't know why rob (on the yahoo list) doesn't recommend the reseating procedure..

[xxxdavidmaysxxx]

Okay. So after tinkering with it for an hour (reseating EVERYTHING) whilst sick with strep throat, I finally got into the boot sequence!!! YAY! But it's still not functioning as it should... When powered on it has the normal "Insert Diskette" or "Boot in progress" and the drives spin, but nothing after that. The drives just spin, and don't click as if they are actually trying to read the disk. At least its at least acting like it's wanting to work now :p....

EDIT: Oh and I forgot to mention that some of the time whilst its "trying" to boot, there is some intermittent banging poppy noise from the output...

EDIT (AGAIN): It seems that the IC that I had to replace that was different from the original works just as it should. And that particular IC is appearently what controls the disk drives power. I switched the replacement IC with one that was identical to the original one that was on the digital board and it performed just the same. And also once or twice when I tried to boot it, it did the old "all led's lit up nothing on screen thing."

BTW Thank you guys for taking time out to help me, I really, really appreciate it as I doubt I could have persevered to the point where I'm at now, I probably would have harvested the filters, sold it off and been done with it! But I would have hated myself for it anyway....

[Chaztech]

Look for my posts on the boot problems.....

Memory RAM IC's in the first part of the unit are all for boot load if any of these ic's mall function it will hang as described.. AND they are notorious for going bad..I even have a bunch of extra..
A sure way to find the bad ic is take out the add on memory module it CAN BOOT without this..
You can use the ICS on it as replacements..(be sure to insert them correctly or you fry them)
I will find my posts and link you to them....I describe all this before


First Ram locations are for boot system then sound loads....

[xxxdavidmaysxxx]

HOLY CRAP!!! IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!           

It turns out it was a memory controly thingy that had had its pin broken off (NOT by me this time. It was broken in the socket probably from stress) I soldered on a new leg, swapped that one for an identical one, and BAM!!!

Shame though, the top disk drive is being flakey.... But so is the bottom one to a lesser extent. Theres no doubt there is still work to be done, but at least now IT WORKS!!!

And by the way, the filters in this thing are phenomenal!!! My Mirage now sounds like absolute crap, the low frequencies on this thing are amazing as well! My Mirage always sounded so thin and crappy. ABSOLUTELY WORTH IT. And turns out quite a few of my disks came from the kalidasound's studio library (A studio based in San Fransisco) So I'm more than happy!!! Thanks so much!!!

[JMP]

Nice to hear...  let me know if you manage to get your floppy drives working. I have three of them as spares that need attention, two with failing motors and one with a misaligned head (which I think is beyond help now). Had a go at swapping motors the other day but that appears a fine art.