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Macintosh Portable ROM card?

S

SpectreGadget

New Member
Joined
Feb 26, 2013
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8
Location
Atlanta
I'm trying to troubleshoot my Macintosh Portable (backlit) start up issues. I've replaced the battery with a new 6V5A lead-acid battery. With it inserted and adapter plugged in, I get a sad mac error: 01000AFC FFFFFF38. Looking this up shows that it is a ROM error.

The mac has a card in the PDS slot
IMG_20130310_151153.jpgIMG_20130310_151159.jpg

that includes 3 daughter cards (just showing one)
IMG_20130310_151113.jpgIMG_20130310_151215.jpg


The cards have jumpers on them, but I don't know how they should be set for proper operation. If I remove the card altogether, I get a happy mac start up, but then it can't start OS 7.1 due to insufficient RAM.

I appreciate any help you guys can provide!
Jim
 
Just for clarification, the primary PDS card has three jumpers, labeled JP1, JP2, & JP3. The daughter cards each have a JP1.

Thanks again,
Jim
 
I was never aware that Apple ever released a ROM card for the portable. They just left the connector just in case and ended up using it for the backlight inverter later on.
The PSI card is a memory card. supposedly it gave you up to 8mb. You need a driver to use it but if it's bombing the system as-is either it has problems or bad caps on the portable's logic board are in need of replacement.
 
I realized it was probably RAM, but can't find anything on it. I took it completely apart and didn't find any major cap leakage like I'd seen on a Classic II, but I did see some black-ish residue around two of the smaller ones, so I'm wondering if that's causing the behavior.

I'm going to try pulling out the PSI card and boot from a 6.0.8 diskette and see if it will boot reliably.
 
The Mac portable is a "no questions asked" recap system along with the SE/30. It doesn't matter what the caps look like, the reason so many non-working portables have been on ebay for so long (excluding a dead battery) is because they were the first mac to experience cap failures almost a decade ago. When we noticed it with the SE/30 we started connecting dots and suddenly we realized that ALL of the macs that used these surface mount caps (and many, many other things) ARE going to and WILL fail.
 
I had seen a lot of discussion about the need to re-cap, but I guess I never gathered that the Portable would be a certainty. I guess I need to decide if my soldering skills are up to snuff enough to take on the project. :)
 
Mac II era and LCs are all seeing the cap issue. Right now it's pretty much the standard thing to do is recap a board no matter how nice it looks. Usually with tantalum capacitors. I've recapped an LC, 3 IIcis, and a IIsi, all of which weren't working. Now they all work. It's the best thing you can do for a vintage Mac.
 
NeXT said:
When we noticed it with the SE/30 we started connecting dots and suddenly we realized that ALL of the macs that used these surface mount caps (and many, many other things) ARE going to and WILL fail.
Click to expand...

Might want to correct that to ALL electronics that use SMD caps from the late 80s-early 90s. My Amiga 4000 is suffering from the same problems!
 
njroadfan said:
Might want to correct that to ALL electronics that use SMD caps from the late 80s-early 90s. My Amiga 4000 is suffering from the same problems!
Click to expand...

"(and many, many other things)"
I got stuff ranging from a GPS to a MiniDV editing deck which all need recapping. Without a stockpile of caps and a rework station it's very expensive to repair compared to 'lytic capacitors which you can do with corner store caps and any iron.
 
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