Emax SE HD Retro: Stuck On Diagnostics

[ditabeardmemo]

Hi everyone:

My apologies for the cross-post from the Emax Yahoo Users Group.

I just received an Emax SE HD Retro rack unit with a factory-installed external SCSI port. The previous owner reported that the unit worked perfectly.

Unfortunately the unit gets stuck on the "Diagnostics" screen at power on. When I power it on, it displays a screen that reads "Diagnostics," and the front panel "Play" and "Stop" buttons are lit. The red light on the floppy drive also stays lit. It does not proceed with the diagnostic tests, no buttons respond and I can't get the unit to move past this screen. This happens regardless of whether I have the Plus OS 1.0 floppy inserted, or no floppy at all. I don't have any SCSI peripherals connected, either.

Also, this unit does not have an internal HD installed, and as far as I know never did. All booting/loading/saving was used the floppy drive or an external SCSI peripheral.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can offer some insight!

[midipuppies]

99% its the floppy drive. I am having the same issue with exactly the same unit- HD Retro rack.
Put a 'new' drive in and away I went.

[ditabeardmemo]

Thanks for the idea Midipuppies. It's odd... this floppy drive was working just fine when the seller tested it prior to shipment, so if it's the cause, it must have been damaged in shipment. There is certainly no visible damage to the unit.

I took a cue from you and ordered an HxC floppy emulator for this machine, so we'll see if that helps matters. In the meantime, I would love to test it with another 3.5" floppy drive. Is there a list of compatible models somewhere?

I disassembled the Emax last night, cleaned the analog board (which was very dusty) and re-seated every socketed IC on both the analog and digital boards. I didn't completely remove any ICs... I just pried them up about halfway out of the socket and pushed them back down again. I also removed and re-seated the ribbon connectors between the floppy drive and the digital board board, the SCSI port and the digital board and the analog board/digital board. On that last one, I only removed the ribbon connection on the analog side because the digital side has a blue connector with which I am not familiar. Any ideas on how to check this?

I'm feeling pretty frustrated for now. If anyone has other suggestions, I would love to hear them...

[ditabeardmemo]

So the good news is this: I checked the position of the ribbon cable running between the analog board (on the bottom of the unit) and the digital board (on the top of the unit), and it turns out it had been flipped so that data line 1 of the cable did not correspond with data line 1 of the analog board pins.

The bad news is the Emax still won't boot and now has new different/problems. I powered on/off several time in a row, and here is what I noticed:

 - All front panel lights turn on, floppy drive light is on, LCD displays black boxes across the top row and nothing on the bottom row, no progress.

 - All front panel lights turn on, floppy drive light is on, "Dynamic Allocation" light turns off after about 0:30, LCD displays black boxes across the top row and nothing on the bottom row, no progress.

 - No front panel lights turn on, LCD displays "Diagnostics" but does not run the tests, no progress.

So guys... any ideas where I should turn next?