I was able to procure a NeXTStation Color (N1200 - non turbo) months ago and after searching for a while, was able to finally obtain the various parts needed to try it out: the system is non-ADB and I have gotten the non-ADB keyboard and mouse. Got a Y-cable from Rob/Black Hole. And got a non-ADB sound box. Also have a 1280x1024 LCD monitor.
While looking for all these other parts, I did an unwise thing and went ahead and recapped the motherboard and power supply without trying them out first. Not wise since I don't have a control now but I was bored. I have successfully restored a number of 68K Macintoshes before and am confident in my ability to recap both logic boards and PSUs.
Ok, so what do I need help on?
I just tried to boot the machine for the first time today (just received the sound box this morning). Pressing the power key on the keyboard starts the machine. The sound box seems alive. The PSU fan goes on. An LED on the logic board near the PSU is lit. The ZuluSCSI I have installed (albeit with no OS on it) also is getting power and looks good. But I have no image showing up at all on the screen.
The LED near the power supply is repeatedly blinking 5 times. I tried searching for a diagnostic manual on what that means but a cursory search was unsuccessful in finding any information on this blinking pattern.
The memory looked odd. I was able to find a PDF diagnostic guide for the various NeXT hardware and I think my interpretation is that I need 4MB sticks (72pin) installed in slot 0 and 1 on the motherboard (in pairs). But this machine I got has 2 sticks installed in slot 3 and slot 7. That didn't seem right. I attempted to move them to slot 0 and slot 1 but that didn't work as these two sticks that came with the machine have chips on either side of the PCB and won't install in consecutive slots. Looks like someone just put some 72 pin simms in here without testing?
Looks like I need to obtain some new memory sticks before proceeding as all of my 72 pin ones are 8MB sticks.
But for now, anyone have any info on the 5 blinking LED lights? Any help would be much appreciated.
I'm a 68K Mac person but always wanted a NeXT machine. I do have a working setup with NeXTStep 3.3 running on an Intel-based machine, but this is the first time messing with real NeXT hardware.
Thanks for any help.
Forgot to note that I did replace the battery with a brand new Panasonic one. And also looking at the board, I don't see any damage of any kind, traces look good (at the eye level, not scope level). And note the processor, RAMDAC, and some other chips are warm (not hot) so the board is alive.
The basics:
1) make sure you're using the middle connection of the Y cable into the next
2) Make sure the monitor supports sync on green
3) Make sure the memory is installed in pairs and are matched (4mb single sided)
The concerning part:
The 5 blinks is an undocumented code and indicates a severe board level problem of some kind. I don't recall this happening with bad memory, but I don't work on the basic color stations often. Do you get the same error condition with -no- memory installed?
1.) I assume I am using the right connections as this NeXTStation Color has a 13W3 connector and thus on the Y cable, there's only a single connector that works, the other two being the VGA connector and the one that goes to the Sound Box.
2.) Yup, monitor supports sync on green.
3.) I've ordered some 4MB 72pin 70ns single sided SIMMs. The two SIMMs that came with the machine were double sided and thus cannot be put into slots 0 and 1 (they were installed in slot 3 and 7 which I believe won't work). So I know I have a problem here.
Yes, the 5 blinks were happening with and without memory installed. If this is an indicator of a board issue, I guess I will have to revisit the caps and ensure they are correct and properly soldered - but I believe they are.
Thanks for the reply!
Caps all seem good. Power supply voltages are all solid. Guess I will try the new memory when it arrives but yeah, if you're saying the 5 blinks is indicating a severe board issue, that's unfortunate.
Well, one more observation. I tried installing the only 72pin memory modules I do have which are 8MB ones (yes, I know this is not supported on this particular model). I put two 8MB modules into slot 0 and slot 1. With those modules installed, I get one solid green LED, then it turns off, and then one more solid green LED, and then it turns off. And then nothing after that on the LED. I also see the alpha lock LEDs on the keyboard go one once and then no more after that. But still nothing on the monitor. At least no more 5 blinking LEDs though. Not sure if the display is supposed to work or not with the wrong memory modules (8MB) installed.
I guess the best thing to do is just wait for the new proper 4MB memory modules and try again.
The correct behavior is for the led to turn off on successful POST. What model of monitor are you using?
Go figure, it's working now? The 13W3 output port on my NeXTStation has snapped screws sitting in the screw holes which I will need to extract, but because of it, I had not screwed down the connector from the Y cable and it must have not been fully seated. I tried again this morning and I get a network boot screen now which is great.
The monitor is a DELL 1905FP.
Note the two SIMM modules I am using are both 8MB's each which I don't believe is supported but it seems to work. I've got eight 4MB modules on the way (total 32MB) so will swap those out later.
I guess in my case, the 5 blinks was due to missing RAM or bad RAM configuration?
Thanks for your help!
Memory finally arrived. 8 sticks of 4MB 70ns 72pin SIMMs. After installing them, things are much better. The floppy is working and reading the moto boot disk which I created using a cheap USB floppy drive attached to a Windows machine. It's also properly detecting the install iso (user.iso) from the ZuluSCSI I'm using in place of a spinning drive. I have the target drive as ID=0 (HD0.img) and I have the ISO on ID=1 (CD1.iso) on the SD card.
Ran into a slight problem where it was complaining that drive initialization failed. I remembered hitting this on my white intel hardware as well. I just configured the ZuluSCSI to use 139 sectors per track and 4 heads per cylinder, then made the drive image a size that was a multiple of 139x4 and things were fine after that.
Then it goes through the install process. After the first reboot, the system comes up in NeXTStep and asks for which packages to install. After choosing some, the system seems to hang for a long time. Eventually it comes back and says it failed installing the "demonstrations" package. So I went through the install procedure again and deselected that package, seems to install fine after that.
Now just need to install the developer tools, install the 3.3 patches, and then get it up and running on my network. :)
OS installed, networking working, and patches applied. Things look great!
Had to make some hardware fixes though.
Mouse
The left button was highly sensitive and each time I clicked, 50% of the time I would get a double click. I tried messing with the double click rate but that didn't help. Something was wrong with the switch. Luckily the non-ADB mouse uses a common D2F-01 switch from Omron. They are readily available and I had some lying around from fixing Apple ADB's mouses. I replaced both switches and the mouse works great now. Also relubed the rollers and replaced the single capacitor inside while I was at it. The capacitor was leaking, not a lot, but there was wetness underneath it with the usual fishy smell.
Keyboard
I noticed a bunch of the keys had horrible actions. They would not depress evenly and if you hit them at a wrong angle, they would not go down. I took the keyboard apart and cleaned it all up inside. All took all the keycaps off and washed them with dishwashing soap which took all the grime off. I didn't want to take apart the switches to do a full lube so I just lubed the stems using key switch lube (one that is ok for plastics as well). That did the trick and all the keys work great now. I also recapped the board while I was in there.
Pretty stoked with this setup working fully. :) Just need to acquire an LCD monitor now that will display in 1:1 without scaling (albeit with some letterboxing).
Congrats!