Delve into Reconnaissance - and fixing my Mac IIcx

[Garrett]

I've had a few troubled boards I've been putting off working on. This past March, my motivation to do something with these boards increased! This was due to the wonderful new Reconnaissance application, developed by @jack 68k. First up was an SE/30 with some boot issues. Reconnaissance informed me of an issue with the Bank A RAM - cool! Next up was a IIcx board that didn't chime. No luck communicating with that one. Lastly, I tried a IIcx board that chimed but never reached a flashing floppy disk.

The diagnostic log for this board is attached below. I think there's hope for this one. I have no idea what a VIA timer is, but at least it gives me a place to start looking for trouble. I can't wait for more models to be added to this great program, and I encourage everyone to give it a try.

 

[jack 68k]

Thanks for the kind words, and great to hear you've been finding Reconnaissance useful!

This result points to your VIA 1 chip. Hopefully the problem is just a result of capacitor leakage - either bridged pins or a broken trace. The chip is labeled UK6 65C22 VIA1 on the logic board.

Among VIA 1's responsibilities is producing interrupts at various intervals. For the IIcx (and II, Iix, SE/30) this test is derived from the TechStep VIA test. Code $00000001 means test 1 of 15 failed (the remaining 14 were skipped) and literally translates to "No T1 interrupts in continuous mode".

The upcoming release will have detailed error messages for VIA tests instead of just the codes.