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IICi Troubleshooting

bunnspecial

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 3, 2014
8,376
6,511
Kentucky
I have a IIci that's-for all intents and purposes-dead. When I hit the power button, the power LED will flash on and off and the speaker will "chirp".

Looking at the service manual, the solutions for these symptoms are 1. Replace PSU and 2. Replace logic board.

I do have a good, working Quadra 700 and the PSU connections look very similar on it. Can I borrow the PSU from it to test the IIci? I don't want to run the risk of also frying the PSU for my Quadra.

If the logic board turns out to be the problem, is there any hope for rescuing it? I don't see any obvious signs of cap problems or other issues.
 
From the Service docs, the original IIci to Q700 upgrade kit says:

"Note:
The Macintosh Quadra
700 Upgrade Kit includes a
Quadra 700 logic board, a
new bottom case, and a new
hard drive power cable"

So the Power Supply is the same. And I vaguely recall them being interchangeable. :)

Hopefully, you've disconnected everything else. Keyboard, Mouse, HD, Floppy, RAM. In this instance, you should at least get RAM error tones if everything else is OK.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the info on the IIci PSU-it is indeed an Aztec brand. I'll see if it works with the Q700 PSU, and if so I think I even have the parts on hand to go ahead with the repair(I may tackle it this weekend)

I actually have everything out of the case now but the logic board, speaker, and PSU, although I did leave the RAM on the logic board.

Fortunately, at least, the HDD is good. I actually was ready to write the computer off and part it out, but stuck the HDD in my SE(for which I'm still trying to get a working hard drive that fits 100% correctly). It booted right into System 7 in the SE.

Even more to my excitement, the HDD was named "Chem Dept. IIci" and was loaded up with a bunch of really great software. Unfortunately, a lot of needs the 68030 to run(and what would run was painful on the 68000 in the SE), so I have a really pressing desire to get the IIci going now. Most of it also would benefit from a color display. My Quadra has too much good software on it-and too little free space-to swap the drives or put programs over.

Assuming I can get this going, I think it will be time to get out the other Radius Precision 24XP that I've been saving for a rainy day. I put a 24X in my Quadra. Both cards came to me in a trade with another member here for some G4 parts, and I've been waiting for the correct computer in which to put the other card.

If I do end up with a dead logic board, I will probably try to find another Quadra 700(or maybe even an 800) to put the HDD in.
 
Unfortunately, the linked repair didn't work, so I bought a new PSU on Ebay for ~$20USD.

It went right back together and worked perfectly. There really is some great software on here. As I mentioned, the HDD was named "Chemistry Department IIci". There was a control panel from National Instrument Co.(makes instrument interface cards) as well as some software apparently designed to interface with a DAC card. The best I could tell, it seemed to have some additional options-possibly to control a potentiostat(judging from the options). There was also the standard suite of computational software(Mathematica and MatLab), some modeling software that I'm not familiar with, and software for processing Xray Diffraction Data.

Since I had a working floppy drive(or at least working after some exercise), however, I took the time to format some 800K floppies(I saved all my dad's old floppies from the dumpster, and sorted out about 75 PC 720Kb floppies, which of course reformat great to Mac 400K or 800K disks). I hooked up an external ZIP drive(I need to find some more of those rather than transferring the one I have between computers) and copied the system 6 images onto the HDD. I then was able to make a fresh set of System 6 disks for my 512Ke that should be here tomorrow.

The only thing left is to track down some of the "short" internal SCSI cables. The one in it was damaged to the point where it wouldn't work, so I now have a 3 foot cable jammed in the space between the HDD and PSU. I did at least do it in such a way that it would minimize the airflow restriction.
 
havokalien said:
I just got a whole garage full of old macs. It will take me a day or 2 to look but Ill see what I can do.
Click to expand...

Thanks, but I've actually managed to locate one.

Did you buy the lot that was listed on the LEM Swap? I'd have snapped it up in a minute if it weren't on the other side of the country. If you did-congratulations! That was a heck of a collection of stuff at a great price.
 
Ya I got it, some of the listed stuff had already migrated for one reason or another but still had a few items of interest.
 
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