General Category > Lisa Troubleshooting and Repair
Apple Lisa 2/10 starting up with Profile only; red light stays on
mactjaap:
I have a Lisa 2/10 with a somehow working widget. Not in best state, so most time it is not in the machine.
For these occasions I can choose for an X/Profile or Profile disk.
When I use the Profile disk (attached to the Lisa with a correct extension card and parallel cable) the disks start up with the ready light on. When I detach the cable the Profile does it normal boot procedure, stepper motor will do its work and ready light will be flashing until this procedure is ready. Only then the ready light is always on.
So for now I switch on the disk and 2 seconds later the Lisa. There will be a boot error but finally the disk check starts and after it is finished it can click on the parallel card icon and boot the Lisa. I made a short YouTube video to show it:
https://youtu.be/cjdD-nR7AYs
(a little bit edited..fits almost in one minute)
My question is. What is happening here? Is this normal? Can I do something so the Profile can do its normal procedure?
stepleton:
Not sure, so let's try eliminating factors :)
Does it do this on both parallel ports?
Do you have a different parallel cable you can try? (How long is the cable?)
If you have another ProFile, does it behave normally using the same parallel cable on the same port?
mactjaap:
Yes! That's the way to go:
Does it do this on both parallel ports?
> Same behavior on the upper port, but something worse.... no boot into LOS 3.1 but an error; 10741
Do you have a different parallel cable you can try? (How long is the cable?)
> I have only one, bought at VintageMicros. Must be good.
>The cable is 90 cm long (~35 inch) and is missing the ping number 7 in the upper row ( as it should).
If you have another ProFile, does it behave normally using the same parallel cable on the same port?
> No I have just one.....
Another test:
I booted with the X/Profile attached. Then you notice it less. I will boot LOS 3.1 from the X/Profile and the Profile will be seen later.
Could it be something with an Lisa 2/10 and a external Profile only?
rayarachelian:
--- Quote from: mactjaap on February 11, 2021, 03:33:10 pm ---Does it do this on both parallel ports?
> Same behavior on the upper port, but something worse.... no boot into LOS 3.1 but an error; 10741
--- End quote ---
This is normal behavior, either there's something in a configuration file or the boot loader blocks are different for drives attached to expansion slot ports. This is a known limit of LOS.
The boot block (AAAA) knows what device to boot from, but after loading the boot loader blocks (BBBB),
I think what happens is that the boot loader remembers that it was supposed to boot from the motherboard port and so it fails. Either that or there's some config file similar to config.sys on DOS that has hardcoded paths to get the the rest of the OS from, and that has the parallel port hardcoded to it (just my theory).
So basically this is "working as intended" even though you get that error. (You'd get the same if you try clone a Widget to a ProFile, even on the same port.)
--- Quote from: mactjaap on February 11, 2021, 03:33:10 pm ---Do you have a different parallel cable you can try? (How long is the cable?)
> I have only one, bought at VintageMicros. Must be good.
>The cable is 90 cm long (~35 inch) and is missing the ping number 7 in the upper row ( as it should).
--- End quote ---
Yup, that pin is supposed to be missing, you'll generally find that it's been plugged up on the female side of the DB25, but if you force a normal straight through DB25M plug, that filler will be pushed in by the pin and allow a connection, or it will fall out later, or it will bend that pin.
That missing pin was just a lame way to keep you from attaching a serial device to a parallel port.
--- Quote from: mactjaap on February 11, 2021, 03:33:10 pm ---If you have another ProFile, does it behave normally using the same parallel cable on the same port?
> No I have just one.....
Another test:
I booted with the X/Profile attached. Then you notice it less. I will boot LOS 3.1 from the X/Profile and the Profile will be seen later.
Could it be something with an Lisa 2/10 and a external Profile only?
--- End quote ---
Wonder if it has to do with the CMD signal being enabled/disabled, I suspect that READY light is just mirroring the BSY signal.
There's another pin that the Lisa uses to detect a ProFile disk, and that's the OCD - Open Cable Detect pin. Not sure if that's of any help though.
So to clarify something, I know you said you have a Widget in that 2/10 that's marginal. Is that external profile hooked up to a Dual Parallel Port? Or are you rerouting the internal widget cable to the outside with one of these: http://vintagemicros.com/catalog/external-widget-connector-p-92.html
So as far as I'm aware, it shouldn't matter whether you have a 2/10 or a 2/5 - the boot ROM will set the VIA pins the same way, however, if you're using the Dual Parallel Port card, this might behave differently depending on the code on that card - there's both a status and boot routine in that ROM - the ROM is about 2K or so.It might be initializing one of the pins differently than the Boot ROM would, which would explain the light going out. But I'm not sure if that's actually true or not.
Actually, no, because at that point, you just powered the Lisa on, and it hasn't yet started testing the expansion slot cards, so it hasn't downloaded the test program routine from the expansion slot ROM, this is an electrical signal on the pins of the parallel port that the ProFile is reacting to. Most likely the CRES line (Controller Reset).
If I have time this weekend (and remember to), I'll try to test this by attaching one of my ProFiles to the dual parallel card and see what happens.
If you're using the Dual Parallel Port card, can you mention which port? Upper or lower you're using? I don't expect they'd behave differently, but you never know.
What I do see in your video is that the ProFile does its normal power on test which preens the surface for bad blocks. And then you turn on the Lisa. Immediately when you do that, the light on the ProFile goes out, and then it seems to do the same test again, which now since it is busy, times out the boot attempt from the Lisa since the drive isn't ready yet. But after the test is done, you can boot off the drive and it behaves normally.
So what I suspect, and I'm likely wrong is that when you power the Lisa on, the RESET signal from the CPU is sent to the expansion slot, which is reflected by the CRES (Controller Reset) signal on the parallel ports - this resets the ProFile and then it goes through it's self test. If that's what's happening, that's likely normal behavior.
If you want to test this immediately, you could go into service mode and write a small program to just execute RESET and RTS, and that might cause the same behavior (force the ProFile into a self-test.)
Incase you want to try this:
--- Code: ---00000000 1 ;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
00000000 2 ; RESET test
00000000 3 ;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
00000000 4
00000000 5
00020000 6 ORG $20000 ; starting address note spaces at start
00020000 7
00020000 8 START:
00020000 4E70 9 RESET ; RESET I/O devices
00020002 4EF9 00FE0084 10 JMP $00fe0084 ; return to monitor (RTS might also work)
00020008 11
00020008
--- End code ---
So you'd do this:
* Power on your ProFile, let it finish the test until ready.
* Power on your Lisa as usual.
* do not insert a floppy but try to boot off the floppy.
* When it beeps with an error asking for the floppy, hit Apple-S to enter service mode.
* Select "2 Set Memory"
* Enter address 20000 (note 4 zeros)
* type in 4E 70 4E F9 00 FE 00 84 and hit enter.
* Select "3 Call Program" and type in address: 20000
Watch to see if the ProFile goes through a self-test again, the Lisa might return an error or not, but that doesn't matter, as soon as you hit enter after typing in the address in step 8, look at the READY light and see if it goes out and starts a self-test again.
If it does, I suspect everything is working normally, even if it might be unexpected. I'm pretty sure I recall the Dual Port parallel slots are wired somewhat differently than the motherboard parallel port.
It might also do the same thing if you go in the back and press the RESET button (or not).
stepleton:
I don't think the LOS error is anything to worry about --- basically, if you install LOS with the drive on a particular port, then it will expect to start up on the same port forever. If you plug the drive into a different port and attempt to boot, you get an error. I don't remember if the error number is 10741, but it's definitely some five-digit thing.
The cable is probably fine, but a shorter cable would be a nice thing to try if we had the chance. No big loss if we can't, though.
At this point I'm not so sure. I feel like I've encountered this once before, but it must not have been as dependable as this or I would have investigated more deeply. I might try to do some experiments later with some real ProFiles that I haven't powered on in a long time.
I would be a little surprised if it were 2/10 specific. There is not much that a drive connected to a parallel port card can do to tell whether it's connected to a Lisa 1, a 2, or a 2/10, so far as I know. The parallel port card emits the same signals regardless. Also, the code that the Lisa will use to boot a ProFile on the parallel port card will be the same on any Lisa --- that's because the code lives on the parallel port card.
It's a 2/10 so there's unlikely to be any trace damage on the motherboard, but just in case, do you see the same behaviour if the card is in a different expansion slot? (Whether you do or not, you're sure to get a 10741 error or similar if you try to boot the Office System.)
If that doesn't provide any clues, then the answer may lie in the ProFile. Maybe one of the interface ICs on the controller board is not so healthy, or maybe a pullup resistor on one of the signal lines is not working to spec. (That would be a strange failure, though!)
ETA: this is a reply to mactjaap's post --- that's an interesting experiment from Ray!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version