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Re: Static discharge (1), Apple IIe (0)
Steven N. Hirsch wrote:
Got to love wood heat in the winter... I managed to static zap my
beloved IIe this morning. Symptoms were odd. It will boot fine, but
the keyboard spits random (and multibyte) garbage from most keys.
Feeling clever, I swapped in chips one-at-a-time from my only spare IIe.
When I got to the "AY" chip on the far right (adjacent to the keyboard
connector), the behavior changed to single characters - all of them
incorrect and random...
Next, I swapped in the extra motherboard (after replacing all the chips)
and, you guessed it, it now produces random single characters. From (2)
working IIe's down to zero in less than a half hour. Whatever was still
borken on the old motherboard must have destroyed the AY chip.
Anyone have suggstions? Anyone with a IIe motherboard they'd like to
part with cheap? Don't even care if the ROMs are on it, as I have
plenty of them.
Steve, unless you have been "recharging" during all this chip
swapping, it is very unlikely that anything zapped on the first
machine could do any damage to the second. Static zaps cause
logic not to function properly, but they do not cause chips to
become "lethal" to other machines. ;-)
I sounds like your keyboard encoder (the AY chip) got zapped, and
apparently a diode or other semiconductor on the keyboard itself.
After you replaced the encoder, the board was fixed, but the keyboard
was not. When you swapped in the good main board, you got the same
result, since it was the keyboard that was bad.
You can certainly replace your main board if you wish, but dollars
to donuts, it won't fix the problem. And there is probably very
little wrong with your keyboard, for that matter.
-michael
New Applesoft BASIC interface for NadaNet networking!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/