[CCTECH] AT&T PC7300 / UnixPC is ill! :(

From: Christopher Smith <csmith_at_amdocs.com>
Date: Wed Jun 12 11:13:10 2002

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andy Berg [mailto:groovelists_at_yahoo.com]

> Today, I acquired a PC7300. Alas, the poor fellow
> seems to have a rather large malady of some type. I've

It will make you feel better to know that they're very sturdy.

> Evidently, before one of these machines first boots
> up, it displays a few rectangular characters in the
> upper left hand corner of the screen. It then proceeds
> to its boot screen. (And then OS loading and whatnot

Yes. The rectangles come from ROM, the boot screen comes
from the on-disk loader. (I think) It's really trying to
boot, from the sound of it.

Put a diagnostic disk in the floppy drive and see what happens.
If you've got not diagnostic disk, that's your first problem ;)

> if all is well.) My machine just sits there and
> displays rectangle after rectangle after rectangle. No
> boot screen ever appears. The machine was working when
> put away for storage when put away a few months ago,
> but refused to boot when it came out. I guess that
> leaves it at the point that I got it. :)

Chances are that it's the disk. You'll find that it's a
normal ST-506 (Is it 506? -- "MFM") disk. If you find that
the disk really is toasted, you can get pretty much any
half-height drive and replace it. They came with Miniscribe
lots of the time. I've replaced them with Seagate and Rodime
drives without trouble. Anything else is also likely to
work.

> I managed, with a bit of yanking about, to get it
> disassembled, down to the motherboard, as per the 3b1
> FAQ. I got some of the big dust out and reseated all
> of the seatable chips. There didn't seem to be any
> major damage anywhere... one of the fans had a cut
> line which I repaired, but there was no evidence of
> any type of overheating. Most socketed chips were

Careful there. There was a procedure somewhere describing
how to disconnect the thermister from the fans, in order
to _keep_ the system from overheating ;) Make sure that
line was one of the lines that powers the fan.

Of course, my system, and my fiancee's system, are both
fine without having had that done.

> reseated, everything was powered on once again, and
> the same thing seems to happen. :( The rectangles
> appear, the floppy drive sits and spins, and the hard
> drive spins up and sits there. There is a loud
> beep/click type sound, which I'd figured to be the
> heads unparking themselves. When the hard drive cable
> is removed, the machine freezes at one rectangle, so
> was thinking it could be something along those lines.

As I was saying, it could just be a bad disk.

> think I can report are that the four indicator LEDs
> are at a constant on state - could also be normal for
> this part of the boot cycle for this machine, too.

I think so, but my memory is fuzzy.

Chris


Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL

"Confutatis maledictus, flammis acribus addictus, voca me cum
benedictis. Oro supplex et acclinis, cor contritunt quasi
cinis, gere curarn mei finis." -Requiem
 
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Received on Wed Jun 12 2002 - 11:13:10 BST