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Glitchy Lisa parallel port

NeXT

NeXT

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2008
Messages
8,198
Location
Kamloops, BC, Canada
There's something really wrong with the parallel port of my 2/5.
Yes, the I/O board has been damaged by battery leakage
Yes, the backplane has been damaged by battery leakage
YES, both have been heavily cleaned and visually damaged traces were patched.

The problem happens if I attach either a ProFile or a Widget (yeah, it shouldn't work but go with me here), 1 out of 10 times it will only detect the Profile and it will always have an error like 85 or 82. If the drive however is still in its self-test when the lisa finishes its own, 10 out of 10 times it will wait for the drive to finish before telling me it has nothing to boot from and to insert a floppy (and the drive is not shown in the BOOT FROM menu).
I have tested each pin of the parallel port and I can find which chip each pin goes to on the I/O board so there are no breaks. The system will also boot form the floppy drive no problem. I have been troubleshooting this for months and I don't have another I/O board to compare with. I'm stumped.

CGS_0080.jpg
 
NeXT said:
There's something really wrong with the parallel port of my 2/5.
Yes, the I/O board has been damaged by battery leakage
Yes, the backplane has been damaged by battery leakage
YES, both have been heavily cleaned and visually damaged traces were patched.

The problem happens if I attach either a ProFile or a Widget (yeah, it shouldn't work but go with me here), 1 out of 10 times it will only detect the Profile and it will always have an error like 85 or 82. If the drive however is still in its self-test when the lisa finishes its own, 10 out of 10 times it will wait for the drive to finish before telling me it has nothing to boot from and to insert a floppy (and the drive is not shown in the BOOT FROM menu).
I have tested each pin of the parallel port and I can find which chip each pin goes to on the I/O board so there are no breaks. The system will also boot form the floppy drive no problem. I have been troubleshooting this for months and I don't have another I/O board to compare with. I'm stumped.

CGS_0080.jpg
Click to expand...

Seems like a bad connection in the cable as it makes connections sometimes and disconnects randomly. I would check for kinks etc.
 
I replaced the parallel port cable with a brand new hand crimped cable. This one works and I KNOW it works with lots of testing to back that statement up.
 
NeXT said:
I replaced the parallel port cable with a brand new hand crimped cable. This one works and I KNOW it works with lots of testing to back that statement up.
Click to expand...

Yeah I hear you. Its problems like this that happen to me I can't sleep at night sometimes. But it does seem now its in that direction of I/O board itself. If you lived closer to me I would let you try my I/O board. I'm learning alot from the Lisa these days and its refreshing to work on them when I always just saw them in photos. Good luck.
 
I know it's on the I/O board somewhere. There's already a bunch of patched traces and a replaced 2N3904 but unless I invest into a hot air gun there isn't more I can do.
 
NeXT said:
I have tested each pin of the parallel port and I can find which chip each pin goes to on the I/O board so there are no breaks. The system will also boot form the floppy drive no problem. I have been troubleshooting this for months and I don't have another I/O board to compare with. I'm stumped.
Click to expand...
I feel that pain. My ProFile doesn't work either even though it seems to go through the self test. I'm sure it's my ProFile drive rather than the I/O board as I have two to swap out, but just what I'm not sure.

One of these days I'm going to have to give it another concentrated diagnostic bash. In the meantime at least I've got an X/Profile card.

Tez
 
BuMP.

I do now own a heat gun but I'm too nervous to pull chips form the board, just in case something gets mucked.

Anyways, so BLU is now available for advanced diagnosis and that means I can better try and figure out what is wrong.

I tried testing both the ProFile and the Widget. When the Profile was made to do anything, the READY light remained lit, the drive would give a "knock" sound every second even though the heads didn't move and it would go away once you unplugged the drive (data, not power). BLU meanwhile would hang while waiting for the drive. If you did not unplug the drive you had to press the reset button to do anything else.

The Widget was a little more promising. Invoking anything the drive would cause it to reset and restart the seek test. It would continue to reset and retest until I told BLU to cancel. The Widget would however immediately reset if you pressed R in BLU.

At this point now the best I can determine is that both the Profile and Widget are good (woah, cool!) and that the I/O board is bad. I need someone who is willing to test my I/O board and drives. Problem is that there's nobody else around here with a Lisa. :/
 
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are you 100% sure that the Profile is working without problems? I also have some 2/5 mother boards with the same symptoms - the battery leackage damaged the parallel port although everything else is working. I also have a 2/5 board where the parallel port is working but the mouse port does not work - it lets run the mouse only vertical... damn battery leak
 
As best I can say the Profile is okay. Of course one only real way to say is to try it on another Lisa but try finding one out here in the sticks.

I have however pulled out the logic analyzer and am starting to probe random things. Is there anywhere in particular you want me to check like the 6522?

Edited: screw it. Lets do some basic poking at the 6522 with no knowledge what I should be seeing.

CGS_0378.jpg


For the test I fired up BLU, told it to identify a drive on the parallel port and.....

IMG_3203.jpg

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Like said before, whenever BLU probes the Profile it makes that knock sound.

Edited:
I-have-no-idea-what-I-am-doing.jpg
 
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I got it. I got it!

Okay, so previously I asked about a rework that had been done to the parallel port of my Lisa.

CRW_7115.jpg

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At the time nobody knew what it was about but I seemed to be the only Lisa in existance to have this. It wasn't replacing anything, it just added resistance and cut a trace.
Would it be a problem to remove and repair? No.
Would I potentially damage something if the fix was wrong? No.

So I yanked the resistors, patched it up and...

CGS_0380.jpg

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There it is! After I took this photo I ran it through an exercise. Went well until it the heads reached the innermost limit and suddenly it began throwing errors and stopped moving the interrupter arm (still resets fine so it didn't just abruptly die)
I'll figure the rest out tomorrow and hopefully by tomorrow evening I'll have LOS installed.
 
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