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Issue with Mac 128

retrobecanes

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 11, 2017
Messages
145
Location
Florida
I am looking for assistance with a Mac 128K. At start up I get the « bong » but it’s followed by a repetitive « flup, flup, flup » sounds and nothing on the screen. The analog board works as I have used it with another logic board (Mac Plus). Hence I believe that the problem is with the logic board. I have consulted the Dead Mac Scrolls but I am not finding a similar symptom in it.
 
If you don't want to open the machine, you can check the voltages by probing the floppy connector using a paper clip.

The pinout of the floppy connector is down the page.
 
So I have tested three analog boards with a mac plus logic board and they all work. The mac 128 logic board however does not work with any of them. I no longer get a bong, it goes straight to “flupping”.
 
If it's flupping, it's likely that something on the logic board is shorted to ground.

Someone could have tried to plug a serial mouse, or a wrong wired keyboard cable into the machine and blown something up. Could also be something else shorted out.
 
Did you by chance happen to discharge the high voltage to the chassis while the logic board was installed and connected to the analog board?
 
The flupping could be for a lot of reasons, perhaps multiple coincidental reasons, so it's going to be difficult to provide advice. It could be the voltage adjusted too high for some reason and it's crowbarring and needs to be adjusted down. It could be bad capacitors. Or it could be a blown resistor or diode. Or a bad optoisolator. Or a bad SCR. Or a cracked solder joint or bad connection on the logic board connector...

Personally, I'd start by establishing a known baseline. First, do a visual inpection, look for broken or burned components or connector pins. Resolder all the connector joints, and verify continuity of the cables (in this case, especially the logic board cable).

If nothing results from this, then check diodes and resistors. It takes a little while, but not too bad. You're just looking for something obviously wrong (i.e. shorted, or super high resistance).

If still no improvement, and you haven't replaced the capacitors yet, then I'd recommend replacing all analog board capacitors next -- again, to establish a known baseline. They're often requiring replacing by now anyway, so it's good for future-proofing as well. Heck, you might even want to do this before doing the diode/resistor verifications.

If still no improvement, then we start diving in to the schematics or other troubleshooting docs (like Dead Mac Scrolls, which was written when these machines were still not very old) and looking at power side components - which do commonly fail, like the 4N35 at Q3.
 
Update: so with a given analog board that works with a Mac Plus logic board, I still get a “bong” following by the flupping with the Mac 128 logic board. However if I plug in the disk drive, the flupping stops but the screen is all black. If I insert a disk or the external floppy emu, the system will seek the disk and navigate through the tracks. What is going on here?
 
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