blair@seismo.gps.caltech.edu (Blair Zajac) (05/30/91)
Howdy, I'm wondering if there are any hardware experts out there who can answer these questions he sent me: > As I told you, the Mac II has been hanging up from time to time. The > last time it was at the UW computer repair shop, they could not find > anything definite bad with it. The only thing that I was told is that > when the (memory?) chips in the video board were jiggled, the problem > went away. Of course, the question is when and if our Mac II will finally > konk out. > Today it went out again, but this time I was able to track down a > reaction sequence. Does the following information sequence make any > sense as to being the video or the main board that is causing the problem. > The machine was running Word and I noted that it did not respond to > clicking the arrow cursor to change to another program (I was going to > look at the mail.) The following sequence and reactions are noted: > 1) The screen saver still operated when the arrow cursor was placed in > the corner that commanded immediate dimming. > 2) The Word text cursor (line) did not blink. > 3) The machine did not react to anything on the keyboard. Note, however, > the arrow cursor did continue to move around as normal. > 4) Next, the machine did not respond to the programmer's reset button > (the back one). Normally it would show a window whereby you could > enter direct commands to the processor, such as G FINDER, which would > bring you to the Finder. However, upon pushing the back button, the > arrow cursor disappeared and could not be found. > As I had stated earlier, is this a video board problem or is it a main > board problem? > Also, is any significant difference between the old video versus the new > video boards by Apple. The new boards can be upgraded to the 24 bit color > capability, whereas the old boards are not. Are the new boards faster > than the old ones? And that's the message I got. For further clarification, the Mac has its good weeks where it will not crash once and at other times it will crash a couple of times a day. Could the fact that the machine is kept in a colder room that it heated up when the Mac needs to be used have any effect on the hardware? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks a lot, Blair Zajac ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blair Zajac Div. of Geological and Planetary Sciences blair@seismo.gps.caltech.edu California Institute of Technology (818) 356-6974 MS 252-21, Pasadena, CA 91125 -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blair Zajac Div. of Geological and Planetary Sciences blair@seismo.gps.caltech.edu California Institute of Technology (818) 356-6974 MS 252-21, Pasadena, CA 91125
jwg1@gte.com (James W. Gish) (05/31/91)
In article <1991May30.064315.23769@nntp-server.caltech.edu> blair@seismo.gps.caltech.edu (Blair Zajac) writes: > (misc. Mac II hangups whereby the author asks about possible hardware problems) Don't rule out software here. I had similar problems that I was blaming on a new disk I was using, and finally tracked my problems down to the use of Norton Utilities Disklight init ver. 1.0, which according to Symantic/Norton is "incompatible with all kind of stuff." Try removing all unnecessary inits and see if you still have a problem. Good luck. -- Jim Gish (jgish@gte.com) Sr. Member of Technical Staff Software Reusability Project GTE Laboratories Inc.