LCII Doesn't Boot from SCSIKnife

[tistan01]

First time poster and second time vintage Mac owner. Never posted on a forum before, very much inexperienced as well so bear with me.

I recently received an LCII from a family member, and it seemed to boot without booting from the hard drive. I concluded that the drive was dead, no surprise since it was a Quantum drive.

I then opted to buy a SCSIKnife, which is a ZuluSCSI based card, to put into it. The card works fine, the log doesn't show any faults, and I remembered to set the system to Mac. I tried 10 different hard drive images, created my own, and tried premade blanks, and neither the Mac nor installer floppies I made recognize nor read from it. It powers on, so something must be working, but the activity light doesn't light up any more than once for the self test, and another for some other reason? A premade MacOS 7.5.3 image doesn't boot, neither does anything prior that supports the LCII.

I even tried (poorly, mind you, but without damaging any traces) to reflow pins on the SCSI connector to no avail. I'm really stuck, and I'm desperate for this machine to work. Even after scanning the board for leaky caps turning up nothing, I need some help. I figured I'd ask here. The last thing I haven't checked myself is the actual SCSI cable, but I don't know how likely that would be. Don't have any images on hand, but will provide if asked. Any help is appreciated!

 

[Froggy814]

Have you replaced the capacitors? Have you flowed the solder over them? If you do Flow the solder you can hear if the capacitor has leaked because the capacitor juice burns off depending on if your caps have leaked or not.

 

[tistan01]

Have you replaced the capacitors? Have you flowed the solder over them? If you do Flow the solder you can hear if the capacitor has leaked because the capacitor juice burns off depending on if your caps have leaked or not.

I have not replaced the capacitors, I didn't have any spare solder on hand and just attempted to reflow whatever was left on the board at the SCSI port. It seems to boot fine to the floppy disk question mark icon.

 

[Froggy814]

Doesn't mean nothings wrong. My macintosh portable boots to the qusetion mark too (even with a BLUESCSI connected). But somethings wrong. I pressed the interrupt button and it gave me errors. Some of the pin on a chip in the board have come loose and arn't connected to the board.

Are there any passive components that don't read correctly? Have you checked all the solder joints with a multimeter to see if signals are getting to where they are supposed to? Those would be my next thing I would try if you haven't figured anything out.

 

[tistan01]

A multimeter sounds like a good idea, will definitely try. First thing I'll check is connections to the SCSI port, that's what I suspect the most, and then go over everything else. If something does happen to not work, though, is it best to touch it up with a soldering iron or I get some spare solder and flux as well? Thanks for the idea by the way!

 

[Froggy814]

You're welcome. I am just trying to help.