Re: Apple IIe emulator card woes!

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Dennis Jenkins writes ...
> 
> Argh!!!
>         This relates to the Apple IIe card (w/ the 'Y' cable!)  for a Mac
> LC-II.  I just purchased one off of ebay.  I plugged it in, installed
> the software and it all worked.  I already had a 10M prodos partition on
> my mac's HS and it recognized that too.  The colors on the RGB monitor
> are so crisp, it was wonderful!

 ....
>         The next night I booted it up and tried to run
> the IIe card control program.  It reported "You must have the
> IIe card installed to run this software".  But the card is
> installed.  So I rebooted and tried again.  No luck.  I removed the card
> and re-inserted it.  No luck.  I did this five more times.  Then I took
> another Mac LC-II out of my junk closet and hooked up my HD, ram,
> keyboard, etc... and IIe card to this other Mac LC-II.  Still no luck.
> I put everything back into the original Mac LC-II chassis.
 ....

> 
>         When I was in high school, we have 5 Mac LC-II's, each with an IIe
> card.  After a few months, three of the cards just stopped working,
> exhibiting the same symptoms as I described above.  However, we never
> opened the macs too "scooch" the cards.  One day, one of the IIe cards
> spontaneously started working again.
> 
 ....

     It sounds like there is some component on the IIe card which is affected
by heat in such a way that it ceases to work. For example, there may be an IC
which 'ratchets up' with the result that some pins no longer make contact.

     Try scootching up and resocketing each socketed IC. If there is an
oscillator module, it is a very good candidate for getting loose in its
socket. Whenever a computer just flat totally stops working, the oscillator
circuitry is a pretty good suspect. (Another good suspect is on-card
power-related circuits-- like a regulator or power transistor or any clever
voltage-changing circuits whaich are supposed to supply a voltage not
available directly from the Mac.)

     While you have the board out, check the solder side of the board under a
magnifier. Look for fractured solder connections (greyish instead of shiny)
and solder connections to pins where the pin does not appear to be wetted--
i.e. the solder is a blob around the pin but does not seem to clearly stick
to it. Resolder any suspect connections using good quality rosin-core solder.

     There is always a chance that something is blown; but, this does not
seem as likely as that something-- an IC, a module, or a bad solder
connection-- works loose.



Rubywand