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From: tswift@well.sf.ca.us (Theodore John Swift)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Tragic SIMMS installation
Message-ID: <24656@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 8 May 91 21:30:10 GMT
References: <41443@cup.portal.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 30


> A friend of mine installed two 1 meg SIMMS chips into a Mac SE a few
> days ago to achieve a 2.5 megabyte configuration, and apparently everything 
> went fine exceptuUpon startup, the monitor was filled with vertical black
> stripes and the machine never made it past the 'Happy Mac' startup icon.
> ...He took the machine to a local Mac dealer who said it was a fried
> CPU (I believe) and charged him > $400 for a replacement. Does this seem in
> order? My friend says that he didn't touch any of the other components and 
> such, so just how sensitive are these inner components to the human presence.

Hmmm... if it really made it as far as the "happy Mac" icon, then it's not
strictly a fried CPU: if the 68000 itself was fried, you wouldn't even get
the "bing" at start time, and it certainly woundn't have it together enough
to get the Happy Mac on the screen; it would just be an 80 watt paperweight.
From your description, it sounds like the dealer probably said "it's a fried
CPU _board_ (as opposed to the only other board, the power supply board).
Field repair of Macs is almost too simple: it's either the CPU (or logic)
board, the power supply/video board, the floppy drive, or the picture tube.
The dealer undoubtedly has no clue as to what's wrong, but $400 is the price
of pulling the logic board, popping in a replacement, and sending the sick
one back to Apple for repairs.  So as far as it goes, that seems like it's
"in order".  But it still doesn't explain what went wrong.  It's moot now,
but I would go over the instructions a few more times, maybe get some
independant confirmation, try the SIMMs in a known working configuration to
determine that they're not the problem, etc.
-- 
----------------------
Ted Swift tswift@well.sf.ca.us
"You bally well are informed, Jeeves!  Do you know everything?"
"I don't know, sir"    ~P.G. Wodehouse