I would recommend you don't feel bad about this. You did the best you could, took good care of it, and treated it well. It is almost 30 year old technology. The fact it works at all is amazing. And that looks like an intense cpu card anyways. It is possible heat just killed it.
Yep. I wouldn't even swear off preventative maintenance. These things are on borrowed time. If you don't maintain them, they'll fail. If you DO maintain them, you might kill them. Either way...
It's no real loss. The machine is useless in the modern day as a multi-processor machine. It only utilizes the extra CPUs in a hand full of applications. If having a multi-processor system is that important, he could put in a G4 multi-processor upgrade card which would run circles around the original card.
@@repatch43 The machine itself is the draw. The fact that one card has been replaced is irrelevant. The proof of this is all these upgrades were used back in the day.
If it doesn't boot, not sure if any would receive enough power to increase temperature. Maybe he can identify using a voltage level in one of the legs though
@@mmpsp693 it is worth a try. All with equal temperatur: Nothing learned. One CPU hot: Bingo. Sure, if it does not boot it might not heat up at all, but if he has a thermal camera and the heatshink removed for other reasons, it might be worth a shot.
One thing that might be work trying is an oven reflow The stress of the heat sink may have cracked other solder joints, so heating it in the oven could reflow them, potentially fixing the board
Might be worth grabbing or borrowing an oscilloscope, grabbing the datasheet for the Motorola MPC952 PLL driver, and check if all frequencies are there. Maybe a broken connection related to the clock signals could keep the CPUs from getting a clock frequency, which would obviously keep it from doing anything.
Could be a bit strange, but have you tried to start the Genesis without the heatsink installed? Just to see, if maybe the heatsink is attached with to much force, so that the CPU-Board is slightly bended and makes no contact to the mainboard.
back then it wasn't a guarantee that cpu's will self thermal limit. if you fire it up without a heatsink it might cook itself. i accidentally roasted an athlon this way once. my heart sank when i saw the smoke. didn't even get to bios.
This was a MAJOR effort to repair the fault. Cleaning, re-soldering, even 3D printing! But sometimes these chips do go bad with no apparent external cause. I recently put an SSD in my old 2012 iMac from storage and it suddenly stopped booting. Cause was a faulty RAM chip, which I never even touched. If it makes you feel any better, back in 2015, I restored a beautiful example of a PowerBook 180c. Cleaned, recapped the screen, replaced the drives, new memory, the works. I took it apart to get some pictures of the inside and in doing so, tore the tiny and thin display cable under the hinge that is unique to this model, instantly bricking it. Unfortunate, but not terminal as I had another 180c for spares with a cable. And then I tore that one too... I had to wait many, many years for another working one to come up on ebay at a reasonable price, during which the 180c collected dust. It had to be working one to prove the cable was intact so I didn't just buy another useless machine. I even spent a lot of time trying to make my own connector from scratch.
One of the first things that suffers from PCB warping are SMD ceramic capacitors. These kind of details cracks very easily and when they crack, it almost certainly leads to short circuit. You can find broken one with multimeter in continuity mode.
If you can be bothered and you suspect the "primary" CPU has failed, you could always try de- and re-soldering the CPUs in a rotation. So U1 goes to U2, U2 to U3, U3 to U4, U4 to U1, etc. to see if you can isolate an issue. If that reveals a dead CPU (or 2 or 3) you could always try salvage the CPUs from other Macs and drop them in. If that fails, then there's likely bigger issues at hand.
@@JustinEdge-i3i Quad processor cards are hard to find. But, if you just need a bare CPU .... I second this. Rotate them, see if it will even try to boot. If it does, try to find out which one is the dud and replace it.
@@sarowie if it comes down to it and he can't find a replacement or get it repaired, he either repairs it or it stays broken - he's already reflowed all the pins so he's already risked the chips in a way
Seems to me like a broken trace on the cpu board due to the heavy bending. This would explain the reseat working/non-working issue too. But could be hard to detect
Interesting video! Have you considered that the slightly warped expansion card may not be properly seating in the card slot? If one or more of those metal connections along the card edge isn't mated with a corresponding pin in the card slot, then that would explain the boot failure. It would also explain why reseating the card worked... until it didn't. Removing and replacing the heat sink may have worsened an existing issue with the warped card. The solution might be to either A) straighten the card somehow or B) tighten the cardslot somehow.
That was my thought as well. 3d printing a shim/spacer to run down the center of the card under the heatsink might be a cheap/easy thing to try before swapping cpus on the card. Figuring out the dimensions would be the hardest part, though measuring the gap near the screws is probably the best way to get the right dimension.
Apple only allowed Mac clones for like a year or so. You did a good job troubleshooting your issue but all along it was the quad CPU card. Either there is a bad CPU or you have a microfracture in one of the traces of the CPU card. Without a powerful microscope, it would be hard to detect. You could try to replace the primary CPU on the quad card with a known working CPU to see if that fixes your issue or eliminate the CPU being the issue.
Awww I feel for you. I've deffinitly sunk hours into repairs that went nowhere. Could you Try to determine which processor is the primary one and simply swap it with another on the board? Sure it'd only be a 3 cpu card, but at least it might boot?
I appreciate the honesty sadly its good to show the actual issues that can be faced now a days with these kinda machines you’re really one of the only guys that does this especially with Mac’s keep it up!!
Don't beat yourself up, Colin. I have done similar things many times. These are a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation, with hardware/machines of this age.
I have a mac laptop, is the only mac I only have in my life, since I live in Argentina and macs are not so commond. I disassembly it a long time ago, and broke some things (I wasn't so experienced nor seen a lot of videos like this) and then, time crashes the screen, and now is just a big paperweight. I still have it, as a reminder that it existed. Anyway, kisses from Argentina and I enjoy your videos a lot, keep it going.
I would look into the resistor packs, the quad ones on the back. With the board flex, those could very easily be damaged. They're known to die on PCI cards all the time.
This is definitely an issue with the CPU board itself, more than likely just a bad/flakey trace on one of the 60x bus lines. Shouldn't be too difficult to repair, you'd just have to check continuity of each of the 60x bus lines from one of the CPUs (the 60x bus is of course shared between all CPUs) to the corresponding pin of the edge connector. Once the damaged trace is found, it can simply be repaired with a bodge wire. While 60x bus is supposed to be length matched, I don't think one slightly out of spec line is going to cause any issues, especially considering the bus speed in these is only what, like 50 MHz? If you'd want to send it in and have me attempt to repair it, I could almost certainly do so.
Nah! Don't be afraid to take things apart... sounds like it already had a problem. I don't think you broke it. It's possible that someone could fix it.
With how that PCB was flexed and the previous owner's trick of removing and reinstalling the card... I'd say broken internal trace and a fundamental design flaw with how that heatsink stresses the board. You could maybe look up some specs on that edge connector, presumably something exists given how the form factor was used by multiple manufacturers? check that every pin that should be connected is connected.
One (stupid) question ; Did you try to put the CPU card in the machine but without the heatsink ? Maybe the weight of the heatsink (i don't know of what material it is made but it's look quite heavy) is one of the possible culprits of the failure since the warping of the board. You don't have to let it run for long, just enough to let the chime sound if removing the heatsink does something. After, one of the possible solution, but it's really long and with the possibility of "unobtainium" components (I don't know if we can get BR new PPC 604E chips and there is an unidentified IC on the board), it's to do a Reverse Enginering of the card and replicate it new.
Great video which I'm sure was not easy to make. I see you checked the PSU to the CPU card, but I wanted to ask if you checked all those rails under load.... probably best done with a scope. Also do you know if the power to the CPU card is further down converted and if so if any of these rails are sequenced? It's really work making sure the power supply is solid as without it nothing will function as I'm sure you know. Not sure if this helps,, best of luck!
Yeah, I was thinking the same. I know it's unlikely, but hey. When removing and reinserting the CPU card, you also reseat the PSU cable. Maybe there's some iffy cap in the PSU that prevents proper booting under load.
Soul destroying stuff, I really feel for you Colin. I managed to kill my PowerComputing CPU card back in the late 90s. In my case, I suspect it was static electricity that did it.
Did you check over the Passive Delay Line's or the 44mhz oscillator ?, My moneys on the oscillator. Put it on the scope when its powered up and use the frequency counter measurement function. I edit: Similar delay line spec sheets say they have an internal fuse. I would honestly start by checking them and the clock source if I was in your shoes. I probably would have ripped the oscillator off and feed it externally off a signal generator during testing.
Maybe because the CPYU board has a slight bent, the pins don't have a good connection with the motherboard slot... Had you tried to use the card without the heatsink to see if the bent in the cpu card is the problem?
First, thank you for the isopropyl alcohol soak porn shots. Second, you're really good at making us feel good about a bad ending. Appreciate you and all of your content.
if it problem with one of the dies, heat/cold could help locating the problem. I assume you checked all the other components on the cpu card? there could be cracked SMD's, and those are really hard to detect
Ok Final suggestions, Did you check the solder joints on the power connector to the CPU card? (I imagine you did, but didn't mention it in video.) I'm banking that you are most definitely right with the cause being from the card warping. My "broken for parts only" Neo-Geo MVS board had failed from that, luckily in it's case it only broke SMD solder joints, was just a 4-layer PCB (bottom, gnd or pwr plane, opposite plane, top), and was easily fixable. Hopefully this isn't a 6+ layer PCB and you don't have broken traces in the middle of the PCB. Also I'm not sure what happens to the decoupling capacitance if the middle planes break from flex. It's a very weak capacitor, and is only used to filter out voltage spikes/noise, but maybe it's enough to cripple the CPU. Would be neat if there were someone willing to "x-ray" the PCB for you. Oh, You never really gave me a good view of the back of the card (unless I missed it), although I'm not sure if there's really anything more to spot. From the end shot it looks like it's just a bunch more inductors. During video comment scratch: I keep pre-typing suggestions, then you do them. 😅 8:34 That cap directly next to it looks ready for replacement too. Though I suppose in the perfect world you re-cap the entire board with SMD Tantalum. 10:20 Tantalum should also last you forever. I'm surprised you have electrolytic caps on hand, since they have a shelf life that eats into their service life.
Is it possible that voltage regulation is the culprit? I don't know enough about add-in cards to say for certain but it might be an external problem to the CPUs themselves
I suspect your diagnosis is correct. One or more of the CPU's on the card has failed. Perhaps send the card to a repair shop with surface mount tooling (Northridge Fix or similar) that could either remove and resolder the CPU's or perhaps find four matching ones to replace them?
Just some sparse thoughts: - i see another big chip other than the 4 cpus on the board. Did you rework it too? - to test if could be some cold boot issue you can try to leave it on for 10-30minutes to heat up and then restart it, or heating the board while on. - did you check the voltages with the board installed? the psu may be too weak for 4cpus but still enough for 2. Measuring with no load is almost pointless.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. There's always a risk (not RISC) with old machines that this can happen. But the educational value of the videos and what you personally learned about the machine makes it worth it. Besides, one day you may have a technician's epiphany and suddenly realize that the problem was hiding in plain sight. Also, whether it's a successful repair, or a vain attempt -- I'd rather watch someone who is being honest.
Just wondering, did you ever try the card without the heatsink? Even at least seeing if it fit a bit better since it was bending from the pressure of the heatsink?
At 7:30 when testing a power supply you should test it under load because if an output capacitor goes bad (and those go bad a lot) it might provide the correct voltage to the multimeter but not to the board. Hope this helps!
Thinking further on this issue I’d also say that if a Power Supply output capacitor was going bad it would have done the same intermittent failure where removing the card AND the power would have been the thing that “fixed” it. Don’t despair! Power supply issues, capacitors and other discrete components are far more common failures than CPUs! You should try to reach out to Adrian at Adrian’s digital basement as he is very good at troubleshooting this issues and hopefully he could throw a couple of ideas before even having to ship anything.
@ThisDoesNotCompute a quad CPU setup is going to need some quality power. Was the power supply tested under a load for sagging voltage or other issues? Perhaps run the processor card from a secondary power supply? Booting on the second power up is also something that happens with failing/edge case power supplies.
Colin, did you try to reflow the entire cpu card? Another thought.... does the angle of the processor card return to normal when you remove the heatsinc? Maybe a slightly bad connection on the motherboard is made worse with the bent cpu card and has gotten to a point of not making contact. Maybe try to run the cpu card without the heatsinc attached and see what happens. Just a thought. Thanks for the great video's and don't feel too bad about it. We've all been there.
check the tantalum caps on the back side of the cpu card. use a continuity tester, should chirp at most, if its a hard short then they need to be replaced. Common for old tantalum to fail short.
Looks like that CPU card is the only one out of the bunch that uses additional power, did you check the PSU? A PSU is a lot more likely to die than a CPU.
Shot in the dark: Remove the heat sink, clean up the cpus. Install it, power it on, just for a minute, and use a thermal camera to see if there is a chip on the board that is hotter than the rest. My thought is that it isn't the CPUs but another chip on the board. If worried about the CPUs, get some individual heat sinks to attach temporarily. Actually, attaching some individual heat sinks might take the strain off of the board. You mentioned that the dual processor came from another unit. You mentioned that the motherboard is the same as another unit. Have you tried the quad in another unit? Case wise it might not fit, but what f you took the motherboard out of the other unit, put it on some stand offs, and tried it open air to see if the CPU works in another motherboard?
Try putting the cpu board under some heavy books(or something else more professional for applying preassure) for a week or two until it de-bends, then try again without the heatsink just to check if it boots.
Don't feel guilty, there was nothing you could have done to save it. Re-inserting it to get it to work for a while didn't kill it, it's age did. Remember what Ben Franklin said about Computers "The only thing you can count on is death and collectability"
Sorry you’re having these problems. This looks like such an awesome computer that I’ve never heard of before and I want to try to find one very badly lol with four processors even though it’s from 1995. Is this able to play UA-cam videos or run Linux? I’m not sure how much testing you did while it was still working. Thanks I love your show.
Given that these CPUs are older than the first G3 processors, I believe they would have a hard time running Mac OS X - let alone stream video from UA-cam. About a decade ago, I was able to get UA-cam videos to load on a 350MHz iMac G3, but it was excruciatingly slow and laggy. It is unlikely that modern UA-cam would be able to load on any Mac OS 8 or 9 browser, but I could be mistaken.
I'm sorry that happened. I've heard stories about some 604 packages being fragile, and I suspect that was all this was. It wasn't your fault, as it was going to fail eventually. Hopefully another card will surface, and that wonderful piece of Daystar engineering will be up and running again.
I'd like to see you demonstrate one or more of the Orange PC cards. They had a long history from the 68K Nubus years almost until Apple switched to Intel CPUs. Most of the Orange PC cards contained all the bits and pieces of an IBM clone, but the final PCI slot models were mostly just an x86 CPU onna card and used software to emulate the rest of the hardware due to the G series CPUs and RAM capacity of the later Macs being able to handle those tasks. Of course with the switch to Intel, a PC card was no longer needed to run PC software since one could simply dual boot the Mac with Windows.
Don't feel bad mate. Like you've always said, 30 year old tech cannot last forever. The CPUs probably finally died and you just need a new old stock to bring it back. I hope there's a solution soon.
A valiant effort, for sure, but one thing you could do that would be easy to verify is to inspect the pins on the bottom of the CPU card and see where it's bowed out the most. If you were to place a dollop of solder on those pins so that it would effectively create a bit of height on them, it could very well make full contact with the slot on the motherboard. It is very much within the realm of possibility that there are hairline fractures or other such issues as suggested by other people, but with the massive heatsink cranking on the PCB, I believe it is quite likely that it's just not fully connecting all the way. Macs aren't consoles, but my experience with working on vintage game consoles is that the connector will lose their ability to clamp after decades of service. This is a bit of a problem in and of itself, but when you've inserted a card that's effectively flexing the entire PCB, the problem compounds upon itself.
I recommend testing each trace with a multimeter. If you can find the broken one, you might be able to use a jumper wire and fix it that way. Also, I recommend modifying the heatsink so that it causes less stress. (Seems like the legs on the side are too long, maybe sand them down a bit?)
Too bad but you give a really good effort to try to repair it. If anything at least you made a video documenting it so it will live on that way. I’m a Mac fan and I knew about clones but I had no idea about the quad clone.
Bummer. I think the enormous heat sink may have been too heavy for the PCB. If it is any consolation, I don't think that ad which claimed with four CPUs you could run Photoshop four times as fast was accurate. Even though I think that Photoshop had been modified to support multiple CPUs at the time, adding CPUs typically does not scale 1:1 in performance. There is always overhead in doing task scheduling and contending for system RAM, bus, and hard disk access, etc.
I think Daystar knew that. These machines were for people with more money than sense, for whom reducing the time to apply a blur from 15 seconds to 12 was considered worth it.
I'm surprised the CPU card from the 9600 is compatible. I know Apple licensed the tech from Daystar, but didnt realize they used it without any chonges.
All of the CPU cards from the 7300, 8500, 9500, Daystar and some other clones are interchangeable. There are also some other models, like the 7600 can I believe use the cards, but came with an older processor. The original 9600 with tsunami logic boards are also compatible, but the later Kansas ones changed the architecture and are not compatible.
Bake the CPU board @ 300-500C for 10 minutes. A good baking brings back many chips. I would just give it close to 500C untouched for 5 minutes first and let it cool off, worth trying.
IBM chips in that blue package are pretty fragile. Not only PPC CPUs die, but also those IBM DACs which were used in many professional boards, like Number Nine Revolutions and such. IBM RAM chips from that time are fragile too.
If I may be so forward: You seem like the type of guy to have a mate, even if they're hidden in the recesses of your FB friends list, that can examine hardware at that level and test it on a bench or something. I wonder if there are clones of those chips somewhere . . .anywhere . . .even in an FPGA arrangement . . . to help breathe life back into that system.
You need to find pinout of CPU chips, and riser cable to test outside of case. Check VCC and ground. Check for clock signal going in on each CPU. Then probe data lines coming out. If there's signals going in and nothing coming out, then there's the problem. You'll have to carefully remove that chip, so as to not rip tracings or lift any solder pads. Pre-tin all legs on new(ish) CPU with fresh solder. Wick and clean pads. Flux and drag-solder pads. Then place CPU, and reflow each leg, one at time. Time to clean off flux and test board. Good luck.
With a PCB bend like that, it was gonna give up the ghost sooner or later. I think it's great you got the chance to document the system before that happened.
Sorry to hear the news. IMHO the previous owners notice indicates that the CPU board was about to die anyway. Maybe it would've been OK for some time if you didnt take it apart but it definitely would have died sooner or later, so it's not your fault. It'd be interesting to know if the cooler was attached properly from the beginning. Maybe there are washers missing? That bend does look pretty gross to me and thermal stress most likely broke one or more traces. Also I had issues with broken vias in the past and there are lot of them on the PCB. Checking everything for continuity hovers somewhere between tedious and impossible. Who knows how many layers the PCB has anyway? But at least the CPUs soldering points on your board are somewhat accessible, with BGA chips on the other hand it's a whole different story. I'd put it aside for now and someday when you're highly motivated you can still revisit it. Good luck then!
what a mammoth of a beaste, nice work maticulously unearthing it for all of us to marvel, we dont need to see this beaste run, just seeing it in the silicon is amazing, all that braun, so little brains, what a historic time.
Didn't see any mention of the power connector on the CPU card in the vid. Was that reflowed in case the solder joints developed cracks from all the connect and disconnects?
This seems like a job for dosdude1 to tackle. They could probably fix it, not sure if they are headed to VCFMW maybe you could discuss it with them? Seems like it be a decent collab/commission
I'd have tried one last thing - turning it on without the large heatsink (maybe with individual, sicky ones) very briefly, just to check whether it chimed/booted - it certainly looks like that heatsink is bending the board and that it may be making the board unevenly connect to the motherboard. Either way - I'm sorry for this annoying situation - unbelievably frustrating.
It's an interesting philosophical question with anything vintage. Do you upgrade it, mod it, preserve a previous mod, or return it to factory standard? Do you pack it up so dust can't get at it, or use it? If you preserve it by not using it, who cares if it works or not? It's just to look at, and not to be used. If you use it, there is always the risk that it will break. Everyone will have a different idea of what to do with something vintage, but whatever is done, should be done to the enjoyment of the owner. It died by being enjoyed, not by being thrown away. Probably the best way to go rather than a screw up.
If the computer is very old but still working don't touch it let it keep working. That's what I always think when i working with old system at my job. I hope you find somonoe that can help you with this awesome machine. Thanks for sharing. 💪
I would recommend you don't feel bad about this. You did the best you could, took good care of it, and treated it well. It is almost 30 year old technology. The fact it works at all is amazing. And that looks like an intense cpu card anyways. It is possible heat just killed it.
Yep. I wouldn't even swear off preventative maintenance. These things are on borrowed time. If you don't maintain them, they'll fail. If you DO maintain them, you might kill them. Either way...
Maybe reach out to Steve from Mac84 about this, he’s a wizard when it comes to vintage Mac stuff
nah not good as dosdude1, he swaps cpus all the time
@@DatBlueHusky both are equally great.
@@RetroTechChris my thoughts exactly, Chris!
@@esseferio I might have already summoned someone. LOL!!
Dosdude is the real genius bar of macs from late 90s
We're with you, if you need to bury it and get an alibi we're here to help.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies
I don't know what you're talking about, he was at my place the night this happened
It's no real loss. The machine is useless in the modern day as a multi-processor machine. It only utilizes the extra CPUs in a hand full of applications. If having a multi-processor system is that important, he could put in a G4 multi-processor upgrade card which would run circles around the original card.
@@tarstarkusz Haha, you have no clue what the draw to a machine like this is
@@repatch43 The machine itself is the draw. The fact that one card has been replaced is irrelevant. The proof of this is all these upgrades were used back in the day.
DayStar seems like a silly name for a high-end workstation, until you ask, what is the one star you can see during the day? The Sun!
Could you use a thermal camera to spot the processor that is not working?
If it doesn't boot, not sure if any would receive enough power to increase temperature. Maybe he can identify using a voltage level in one of the legs though
@@mmpsp693 without the heatsink he could probably try to run it short enough to see a small difference between processors easily.
@@mmpsp693 it is worth a try. All with equal temperatur: Nothing learned. One CPU hot: Bingo.
Sure, if it does not boot it might not heat up at all, but if he has a thermal camera and the heatshink removed for other reasons, it might be worth a shot.
One thing that might be work trying is an oven reflow
The stress of the heat sink may have cracked other solder joints, so heating it in the oven could reflow them, potentially fixing the board
Same issue as the XBox 360!
@@kirishima638 : sort of i've worked on those but they are GBA with none lead solder that was the issue .................
Oven reflow is never a good idea. Reflowing with a heat gun and some flux is much better, although it probably will not work either.
I don't think it'll fix the problem, but I don't see the harm either. As long as it's done properly...
@@RoxGYT Never? That's a bit of a stretch. The heat gun method has its flaws too.
Might be worth grabbing or borrowing an oscilloscope, grabbing the datasheet for the Motorola MPC952 PLL driver, and check if all frequencies are there. Maybe a broken connection related to the clock signals could keep the CPUs from getting a clock frequency, which would obviously keep it from doing anything.
That is my thought as well. The Problem needs to bei narrowed down on the CPU Board.
Could be a bit strange, but have you tried to start the Genesis without the heatsink installed?
Just to see, if maybe the heatsink is attached with to much force, so that the CPU-Board is slightly bended and makes no contact to the mainboard.
Was thinking the same
back then it wasn't a guarantee that cpu's will self thermal limit. if you fire it up without a heatsink it might cook itself. i accidentally roasted an athlon this way once. my heart sank when i saw the smoke. didn't even get to bios.
This was a MAJOR effort to repair the fault. Cleaning, re-soldering, even 3D printing! But sometimes these chips do go bad with no apparent external cause.
I recently put an SSD in my old 2012 iMac from storage and it suddenly stopped booting. Cause was a faulty RAM chip, which I never even touched.
If it makes you feel any better, back in 2015, I restored a beautiful example of a PowerBook 180c. Cleaned, recapped the screen, replaced the drives, new memory, the works. I took it apart to get some pictures of the inside and in doing so, tore the tiny and thin display cable under the hinge that is unique to this model, instantly bricking it.
Unfortunate, but not terminal as I had another 180c for spares with a cable.
And then I tore that one too...
I had to wait many, many years for another working one to come up on ebay at a reasonable price, during which the 180c collected dust. It had to be working one to prove the cable was intact so I didn't just buy another useless machine.
I even spent a lot of time trying to make my own connector from scratch.
One of the first things that suffers from PCB warping are SMD ceramic capacitors. These kind of details cracks very easily and when they crack, it almost certainly leads to short circuit. You can find broken one with multimeter in continuity mode.
If you can be bothered and you suspect the "primary" CPU has failed, you could always try de- and re-soldering the CPUs in a rotation. So U1 goes to U2, U2 to U3, U3 to U4, U4 to U1, etc. to see if you can isolate an issue. If that reveals a dead CPU (or 2 or 3) you could always try salvage the CPUs from other Macs and drop them in. If that fails, then there's likely bigger issues at hand.
As he said they hard to find
@@JustinEdge-i3i Quad processor cards are hard to find. But, if you just need a bare CPU ....
I second this. Rotate them, see if it will even try to boot. If it does, try to find out which one is the dud and replace it.
@@nickwallette6201 you do know much effort and risk it is to remove and resolder the cpus?
@@sarowie with the proper tools it's doable
@@sarowie if it comes down to it and he can't find a replacement or get it repaired, he either repairs it or it stays broken - he's already reflowed all the pins so he's already risked the chips in a way
Seems to me like a broken trace on the cpu board due to the heavy bending. This would explain the reseat working/non-working issue too. But could be hard to detect
Dos dude might be the guy to call
was about to comment this! He would have to resist the urge to change it to a quad g3 card though :D
@@SAerror1 He would have to design some sort of board that converts the QFP footprint on the board to a BGA footprint before that's possible, though!
@@SAerror1 He'd probably upgrade it to to something never heard or seen before, still, it might be possible to swap the cpu chips with "new" ones
Coming from your follow up video, you can spot the busted connector @12:59!
Sorry to hear about the machine. I was stoked to see that one of my BlueSCSI brackets lives in it!
Interesting video! Have you considered that the slightly warped expansion card may not be properly seating in the card slot? If one or more of those metal connections along the card edge isn't mated with a corresponding pin in the card slot, then that would explain the boot failure. It would also explain why reseating the card worked... until it didn't. Removing and replacing the heat sink may have worsened an existing issue with the warped card. The solution might be to either A) straighten the card somehow or B) tighten the cardslot somehow.
That was my thought as well. 3d printing a shim/spacer to run down the center of the card under the heatsink might be a cheap/easy thing to try before swapping cpus on the card. Figuring out the dimensions would be the hardest part, though measuring the gap near the screws is probably the best way to get the right dimension.
Apple only allowed Mac clones for like a year or so. You did a good job troubleshooting your issue but all along it was the quad CPU card. Either there is a bad CPU or you have a microfracture in one of the traces of the CPU card. Without a powerful microscope, it would be hard to detect. You could try to replace the primary CPU on the quad card with a known working CPU to see if that fixes your issue or eliminate the CPU being the issue.
that's the main reason why i don't take apart electronics anymore.
like my grandfather says if it works fine let it be and don't mess with it
Awww I feel for you. I've deffinitly sunk hours into repairs that went nowhere. Could you Try to determine which processor is the primary one and simply swap it with another on the board? Sure it'd only be a 3 cpu card, but at least it might boot?
Or swap it with a 604e from a sacrificial common single CPU board
It seems that there ought to be documentation identifying the primary CPU. But of course I don't know if there is.
I appreciate the honesty sadly its good to show the actual issues that can be faced now a days with these kinda machines you’re really one of the only guys that does this especially with Mac’s keep it up!!
11:24 That's a cool little 3D printing hack, thanks!
Don't beat yourself up, Colin. I have done similar things many times. These are a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation, with hardware/machines of this age.
$14,400 USD in 1994 is $29,313 USD in 2023. People balk at a $7000 Mac Pro these days, but in reality, Macs have never been cheaper.
I have a mac laptop, is the only mac I only have in my life, since I live in Argentina and macs are not so commond. I disassembly it a long time ago, and broke some things (I wasn't so experienced nor seen a lot of videos like this) and then, time crashes the screen, and now is just a big paperweight. I still have it, as a reminder that it existed.
Anyway, kisses from Argentina and I enjoy your videos a lot, keep it going.
I'm wondering if those nylon washers are supposed to go between the CPU card and the heatsink. That could explain the card being warped.
I would look into the resistor packs, the quad ones on the back. With the board flex, those could very easily be damaged. They're known to die on PCI cards all the time.
This is definitely an issue with the CPU board itself, more than likely just a bad/flakey trace on one of the 60x bus lines. Shouldn't be too difficult to repair, you'd just have to check continuity of each of the 60x bus lines from one of the CPUs (the 60x bus is of course shared between all CPUs) to the corresponding pin of the edge connector. Once the damaged trace is found, it can simply be repaired with a bodge wire. While 60x bus is supposed to be length matched, I don't think one slightly out of spec line is going to cause any issues, especially considering the bus speed in these is only what, like 50 MHz? If you'd want to send it in and have me attempt to repair it, I could almost certainly do so.
THANKS for making the STL Available!
Nah! Don't be afraid to take things apart... sounds like it already had a problem. I don't think you broke it. It's possible that someone could fix it.
Giving you gentle pat on the back for support. We all feel your pain.
With how that PCB was flexed and the previous owner's trick of removing and reinstalling the card... I'd say broken internal trace and a fundamental design flaw with how that heatsink stresses the board.
You could maybe look up some specs on that edge connector, presumably something exists given how the form factor was used by multiple manufacturers? check that every pin that should be connected is connected.
One (stupid) question ; Did you try to put the CPU card in the machine but without the heatsink ? Maybe the weight of the heatsink (i don't know of what material it is made but it's look quite heavy) is one of the possible culprits of the failure since the warping of the board. You don't have to let it run for long, just enough to let the chime sound if removing the heatsink does something.
After, one of the possible solution, but it's really long and with the possibility of "unobtainium" components (I don't know if we can get BR new PPC 604E chips and there is an unidentified IC on the board), it's to do a Reverse Enginering of the card and replicate it new.
Great video which I'm sure was not easy to make.
I see you checked the PSU to the CPU card, but I wanted to ask if you checked all those rails under load.... probably best done with a scope.
Also do you know if the power to the CPU card is further down converted and if so if any of these rails are sequenced?
It's really work making sure the power supply is solid as without it nothing will function as I'm sure you know.
Not sure if this helps,, best of luck!
Yeah, I was thinking the same. I know it's unlikely, but hey. When removing and reinserting the CPU card, you also reseat the PSU cable. Maybe there's some iffy cap in the PSU that prevents proper booting under load.
I know the feeling, my Voodoo Banshee inexplicably stopped working recently and I don't know why 😢. Nice troubleshooting and thanks for the vid!
$14,295 in 1995. Adjusted for inflation, that comes out to $28,618.98.
Excuse me while I grab a shovel to pick my jaw off the floor...
Lots of very important photos had to be edited back in the day.
Soul destroying stuff, I really feel for you Colin. I managed to kill my PowerComputing CPU card back in the late 90s. In my case, I suspect it was static electricity that did it.
You gave that computer a life for it's last golden years. More than you can say about 99,% of other computers
Did you check over the Passive Delay Line's or the 44mhz oscillator ?, My moneys on the oscillator. Put it on the scope when its powered up and use the frequency counter measurement function.
I
edit: Similar delay line spec sheets say they have an internal fuse. I would honestly start by checking them and the clock source if I was in your shoes. I probably would have ripped the oscillator off and feed it externally off a signal generator during testing.
nothing ventured, nothing gained.... don't feel too bad about what happened!!
Maybe because the CPYU board has a slight bent, the pins don't have a good connection with the motherboard slot... Had you tried to use the card without the heatsink to see if the bent in the cpu card is the problem?
First, thank you for the isopropyl alcohol soak porn shots.
Second, you're really good at making us feel good about a bad ending.
Appreciate you and all of your content.
I confess that I enjoyed that soak too
Did you check all the 'via'? the connections between the two sides of the PCB? Almost certainly one or more of the vias near the connector is broken.
if it problem with one of the dies, heat/cold could help locating the problem.
I assume you checked all the other components on the cpu card? there could be cracked SMD's, and those are really hard to detect
Ok Final suggestions, Did you check the solder joints on the power connector to the CPU card? (I imagine you did, but didn't mention it in video.) I'm banking that you are most definitely right with the cause being from the card warping. My "broken for parts only" Neo-Geo MVS board had failed from that, luckily in it's case it only broke SMD solder joints, was just a 4-layer PCB (bottom, gnd or pwr plane, opposite plane, top), and was easily fixable. Hopefully this isn't a 6+ layer PCB and you don't have broken traces in the middle of the PCB. Also I'm not sure what happens to the decoupling capacitance if the middle planes break from flex. It's a very weak capacitor, and is only used to filter out voltage spikes/noise, but maybe it's enough to cripple the CPU. Would be neat if there were someone willing to "x-ray" the PCB for you. Oh, You never really gave me a good view of the back of the card (unless I missed it), although I'm not sure if there's really anything more to spot. From the end shot it looks like it's just a bunch more inductors.
During video comment scratch: I keep pre-typing suggestions, then you do them. 😅 8:34 That cap directly next to it looks ready for replacement too. Though I suppose in the perfect world you re-cap the entire board with SMD Tantalum. 10:20 Tantalum should also last you forever. I'm surprised you have electrolytic caps on hand, since they have a shelf life that eats into their service life.
Is it possible that voltage regulation is the culprit? I don't know enough about add-in cards to say for certain but it might be an external problem to the CPUs themselves
Did you not try the quad CPU card without the heatsink? Also, you really should add a thermal camera to your toolkit
Electronics Engineer here. I don't see anything obvious that you've done that would have killed that CPU card.
That sucks but don't let it get you down. And don't let it discourage you from working on older tech in the future.
I suspect your diagnosis is correct. One or more of the CPU's on the card has failed. Perhaps send the card to a repair shop with surface mount tooling (Northridge Fix or similar) that could either remove and resolder the CPU's or perhaps find four matching ones to replace them?
Plot twist it was a broken solder joint on the processor card
Just some sparse thoughts:
- i see another big chip other than the 4 cpus on the board. Did you rework it too?
- to test if could be some cold boot issue you can try to leave it on for 10-30minutes to heat up and then restart it, or heating the board while on.
- did you check the voltages with the board installed? the psu may be too weak for 4cpus but still enough for 2. Measuring with no load is almost pointless.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. There's always a risk (not RISC) with old machines that this can happen. But the educational value of the videos and what you personally learned about the machine makes it worth it. Besides, one day you may have a technician's epiphany and suddenly realize that the problem was hiding in plain sight. Also, whether it's a successful repair, or a vain attempt -- I'd rather watch someone who is being honest.
Doesn't matter if you did, you can't take it with you. There are no pockets in shrouds.
Just wondering, did you ever try the card without the heatsink? Even at least seeing if it fit a bit better since it was bending from the pressure of the heatsink?
At 7:30 when testing a power supply you should test it under load because if an output capacitor goes bad (and those go bad a lot) it might provide the correct voltage to the multimeter but not to the board. Hope this helps!
Thinking further on this issue I’d also say that if a Power Supply output capacitor was going bad it would have done the same intermittent failure where removing the card AND the power would have been the thing that “fixed” it. Don’t despair! Power supply issues, capacitors and other discrete components are far more common failures than CPUs! You should try to reach out to Adrian at Adrian’s digital basement as he is very good at troubleshooting this issues and hopefully he could throw a couple of ideas before even having to ship anything.
@ThisDoesNotCompute a quad CPU setup is going to need some quality power. Was the power supply tested under a load for sagging voltage or other issues? Perhaps run the processor card from a secondary power supply? Booting on the second power up is also something that happens with failing/edge case power supplies.
Colin, did you try to reflow the entire cpu card? Another thought.... does the angle of the processor card return to normal when you remove the heatsinc? Maybe a slightly bad connection on the motherboard is made worse with the bent cpu card and has gotten to a point of not making contact. Maybe try to run the cpu card without the heatsinc attached and see what happens. Just a thought. Thanks for the great video's and don't feel too bad about it. We've all been there.
check the tantalum caps on the back side of the cpu card. use a continuity tester, should chirp at most, if its a hard short then they need to be replaced. Common for old tantalum to fail short.
Looks like that CPU card is the only one out of the bunch that uses additional power, did you check the PSU?
A PSU is a lot more likely to die than a CPU.
He checked the PSU but without Load. Maybe rechecking with an oscilloscope under load?
@@rubberduck4966 He did? I must have missed that part somehow
Shot in the dark: Remove the heat sink, clean up the cpus. Install it, power it on, just for a minute, and use a thermal camera to see if there is a chip on the board that is hotter than the rest. My thought is that it isn't the CPUs but another chip on the board. If worried about the CPUs, get some individual heat sinks to attach temporarily.
Actually, attaching some individual heat sinks might take the strain off of the board.
You mentioned that the dual processor came from another unit. You mentioned that the motherboard is the same as another unit. Have you tried the quad in another unit? Case wise it might not fit, but what f you took the motherboard out of the other unit, put it on some stand offs, and tried it open air to see if the CPU works in another motherboard?
Try putting the cpu board under some heavy books(or something else more professional for applying preassure) for a week or two until it de-bends, then try again without the heatsink just to check if it boots.
0:05 what CCTV were you using?
Don't feel guilty, there was nothing you could have done to save it. Re-inserting it to get it to work for a while didn't kill it, it's age did. Remember what Ben Franklin said about Computers "The only thing you can count on is death and collectability"
... taxes
Sorry you’re having these problems. This looks like such an awesome computer that I’ve never heard of before and I want to try to find one very badly lol with four processors even though it’s from 1995. Is this able to play UA-cam videos or run Linux? I’m not sure how much testing you did while it was still working. Thanks I love your show.
Given that these CPUs are older than the first G3 processors, I believe they would have a hard time running Mac OS X - let alone stream video from UA-cam. About a decade ago, I was able to get UA-cam videos to load on a 350MHz iMac G3, but it was excruciatingly slow and laggy. It is unlikely that modern UA-cam would be able to load on any Mac OS 8 or 9 browser, but I could be mistaken.
my condolences for your loss.
I'm sorry that happened. I've heard stories about some 604 packages being fragile, and I suspect that was all this was. It wasn't your fault, as it was going to fail eventually. Hopefully another card will surface, and that wonderful piece of Daystar engineering will be up and running again.
I have a 9500 with a dual processor card. If you run BeOS on it, it uses both processors and runs in SMP mode. Worth doing a video on it.
5:00 literally to much thermal paste
I'd like to see you demonstrate one or more of the Orange PC cards. They had a long history from the 68K Nubus years almost until Apple switched to Intel CPUs. Most of the Orange PC cards contained all the bits and pieces of an IBM clone, but the final PCI slot models were mostly just an x86 CPU onna card and used software to emulate the rest of the hardware due to the G series CPUs and RAM capacity of the later Macs being able to handle those tasks.
Of course with the switch to Intel, a PC card was no longer needed to run PC software since one could simply dual boot the Mac with Windows.
Don't feel bad mate. Like you've always said, 30 year old tech cannot last forever. The CPUs probably finally died and you just need a new old stock to bring it back. I hope there's a solution soon.
Heat up each core with a an air solder to around 320celsius for few minutes, then try again.
I’d say source 4 604 CPUs and give dosdude a call to solder new chips to that CPU card.
that computer is huge, you could fit your whole arm inside the case
Did you tried the quad card in the other machine that had the dual cpus
at 14:41 the processor on the right. Left most pin facing the screen looks broken.
A valiant effort, for sure, but one thing you could do that would be easy to verify is to inspect the pins on the bottom of the CPU card and see where it's bowed out the most. If you were to place a dollop of solder on those pins so that it would effectively create a bit of height on them, it could very well make full contact with the slot on the motherboard. It is very much within the realm of possibility that there are hairline fractures or other such issues as suggested by other people, but with the massive heatsink cranking on the PCB, I believe it is quite likely that it's just not fully connecting all the way. Macs aren't consoles, but my experience with working on vintage game consoles is that the connector will lose their ability to clamp after decades of service.
This is a bit of a problem in and of itself, but when you've inserted a card that's effectively flexing the entire PCB, the problem compounds upon itself.
Wow colin big wow, amazing effect buddies. Best video so far for me. PS does PCBway fix boards
I recommend testing each trace with a multimeter. If you can find the broken one, you might be able to use a jumper wire and fix it that way. Also, I recommend modifying the heatsink so that it causes less stress. (Seems like the legs on the side are too long, maybe sand them down a bit?)
Don't feel too bad about taking the card out. It was neat to see how they built quad core boards back in the day.
Too bad but you give a really good effort to try to repair it. If anything at least you made a video documenting it so it will live on that way. I’m a Mac fan and I knew about clones but I had no idea about the quad clone.
Bummer. I think the enormous heat sink may have been too heavy for the PCB. If it is any consolation, I don't think that ad which claimed with four CPUs you could run Photoshop four times as fast was accurate. Even though I think that Photoshop had been modified to support multiple CPUs at the time, adding CPUs typically does not scale 1:1 in performance. There is always overhead in doing task scheduling and contending for system RAM, bus, and hard disk access, etc.
I think Daystar knew that. These machines were for people with more money than sense, for whom reducing the time to apply a blur from 15 seconds to 12 was considered worth it.
I feel like having 4 CPUs has to be a main point of failure
I one killed a very rare Silicon Graphics workstation by connecting it to an ungrounded socket 😱
We're with you if you need to cremate your beauty and get a alibi we're all here to help and support you in such a tough time
I'm surprised the CPU card from the 9600 is compatible. I know Apple licensed the tech from Daystar, but didnt realize they used it without any chonges.
All of the CPU cards from the 7300, 8500, 9500, Daystar and some other clones are interchangeable. There are also some other models, like the 7600 can I believe use the cards, but came with an older processor. The original 9600 with tsunami logic boards are also compatible, but the later Kansas ones changed the architecture and are not compatible.
Bake the CPU board @ 300-500C for 10 minutes. A good baking brings back many chips. I would just give it close to 500C untouched for 5 minutes first and let it cool off, worth trying.
IBM chips in that blue package are pretty fragile. Not only PPC CPUs die, but also those IBM DACs which were used in many professional boards, like Number Nine Revolutions and such.
IBM RAM chips from that time are fragile too.
If I may be so forward: You seem like the type of guy to have a mate, even if they're hidden in the recesses of your FB friends list, that can examine hardware at that level and test it on a bench or something. I wonder if there are clones of those chips somewhere . . .anywhere . . .even in an FPGA arrangement . . . to help breathe life back into that system.
You need to find pinout of CPU chips, and riser cable to test outside of case. Check VCC and ground. Check for clock signal going in on each CPU. Then probe data lines coming out. If there's signals going in and nothing coming out, then there's the problem. You'll have to carefully remove that chip, so as to not rip tracings or lift any solder pads. Pre-tin all legs on new(ish) CPU with fresh solder. Wick and clean pads. Flux and drag-solder pads. Then place CPU, and reflow each leg, one at time. Time to clean off flux and test board. Good luck.
With a PCB bend like that, it was gonna give up the ghost sooner or later. I think it's great you got the chance to document the system before that happened.
it'll give up the ghost, maybe bite into the grass even.
Sorry to hear the news. IMHO the previous owners notice indicates that the CPU board was about to die anyway. Maybe it would've been OK for some time if you didnt take it apart but it definitely would have died sooner or later, so it's not your fault. It'd be interesting to know if the cooler was attached properly from the beginning. Maybe there are washers missing? That bend does look pretty gross to me and thermal stress most likely broke one or more traces. Also I had issues with broken vias in the past and there are lot of them on the PCB. Checking everything for continuity hovers somewhere between tedious and impossible. Who knows how many layers the PCB has anyway? But at least the CPUs soldering points on your board are somewhat accessible, with BGA chips on the other hand it's a whole different story. I'd put it aside for now and someday when you're highly motivated you can still revisit it. Good luck then!
Almost every multi-layer board failure I've encountered was failed vias. And I agree servicing the heatsink is probably what finally killed it.
what a mammoth of a beaste, nice work maticulously unearthing it for all of us to marvel, we dont need to see this beaste run, just seeing it in the silicon is amazing, all that braun, so little brains, what a historic time.
Didn't see any mention of the power connector on the CPU card in the vid. Was that reflowed in case the solder joints developed cracks from all the connect and disconnects?
TIME TO SEND THE CARD TO DosDude1 😉😄
I KILLED my 2012 Macbook pro yesterday replacing the battery I know how you're feeling. ugh
This seems like a job for dosdude1 to tackle. They could probably fix it, not sure if they are headed to VCFMW maybe you could discuss it with them? Seems like it be a decent collab/commission
I'd have tried one last thing - turning it on without the large heatsink (maybe with individual, sicky ones) very briefly, just to check whether it chimed/booted - it certainly looks like that heatsink is bending the board and that it may be making the board unevenly connect to the motherboard. Either way - I'm sorry for this annoying situation - unbelievably frustrating.
It's an interesting philosophical question with anything vintage. Do you upgrade it, mod it, preserve a previous mod, or return it to factory standard? Do you pack it up so dust can't get at it, or use it?
If you preserve it by not using it, who cares if it works or not? It's just to look at, and not to be used. If you use it, there is always the risk that it will break.
Everyone will have a different idea of what to do with something vintage, but whatever is done, should be done to the enjoyment of the owner.
It died by being enjoyed, not by being thrown away. Probably the best way to go rather than a screw up.
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If the computer is very old but still working don't touch it let it keep working. That's what I always think when i working with old system at my job. I hope you find somonoe that can help you with this awesome machine. Thanks for sharing. 💪