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From: huff@mcclb0.med.nyu.edu (Edward J. Huff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: How system 7 "broke" my IIfx
Message-ID: <1991Jun5.142010.1@mcclb0.med.nyu.edu>
Date: 5 Jun 91 18:20:10 GMT
Sender: notes@cmcl2.nyu.edu (Notes Person)
Organization: NYU Medical Center, New York, NY, USA
Lines: 36
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I recently installed system 7 on a removable hard drive on one of 
three IIfx's on an ethernet in our lab.  One of the other graduate
students was playing around with it, and after a while, he came
and asked me what the major chord tone pattern means.  I came to
look, and sure enough, the screen remained dark during startup.
On pressing the reset button, the ordinary chord played, but
shortly thereafter, the major chord played.

I thought maybe something was wrong with the parameter RAM,
but I don't know off hand how to clear it.  I looked in the
tech note index and in the index to the Mac reference which
came with the machine, but no luck.  I figured that couldn't
be it anyway... the machine was acting flakey earlier, so
it must have failed solid now.

So I called up the department office to obtain a copy of the
original P.O. for proof of purchase and began disassembling
the system.  I tried it with no SCSI disks attached.  Then I
got the keys to remove the steel cables, removed the monitor,
the ethernet cable, and the cables to the Liquid Light film 
printer.  Next, since I didn't want to take any unnecessary
hardware to the dealer, I removed the ethernet card and
the Liquid Light card.

Then, just for fun, I reconnected the ADB and monitor, and
powered on.  No major chord!  I inserted a 6.0.7 startup
disk, and a dialog box about 32 bit mode came up.  I
clicked "switch back to 24 bit mode" and the Mac came up
fine.  Then I reconnected the SCSI cable, replaced the
ethernet card, loaded system 7, switched to 32 bit mode,
restarted, and found that >8 meg was available for one 
application.  Next, I replaced the Liquid Light card and
restarted.  Major chords again.

Conclusion:  the declaration ROM labeled "Still Light V2.0
Copyright LiquidLight 1989" is not 32 bit clean.