Re: IT LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>... it powers now!!!!!!

Congratulations on your progress so far!

> It has the bad i/o board message with a 50 below it. What
>does that mean?

Although a VIA (or associated electronics) could be bad as suggested by the error, my experience in recent years is that self-test errors and other problems are usually due to oxidized/corroded/poor contacts.

Hence this suggestion:

Remove the cards from the card cage, and clean all of the edge connectors with ~99% isopropyl alcohol (available at your pharmacy).

Any fingers that have substantial discolouration or corrosion might need something more aggressive, such as using a soft pencil eraser (but be gentle as the gold plating is easy to erase!)

Before putting the cards back in, inspect the sockets for corrosion or bent contacts. These can be cleaned with alcohol too, using a soft cloth wrapped around a piece of thin cardboard -- be sure to wipe "in and out" only, don't wipe sideways or the contacts may be bent out of shape.

Then partially insert each card by itself, and look for any contacts in the connector that are inconsistent with the rest. These may have been broken or bent and in need of repair.

For final assembly, I wipe the cardedge connectors with an electronic contact cleaner that contains silicone; this provides a barrier to reduce future oxidation, and acts as a lubricant which reduces wear on the gold plating.

When inserting the cards for reassembly, install and remove them a few times to 'wipe' the contacts. This helps to break through any remaining oxide and help everything seat properly.

If the problem persists, sometimes just performing the last "wiping" procedure will resolve it.

The component sockets can have a similar problem, but this seems to be less common. If oxidation is obvious, cleaning the component legs with a pencil eraser seems to work, but you need to support the legs so they don't suffer any stress. If a component socket is bad, I would replace it with a new AMP/Tyco Dual Leaf socket, or a machined contact socket with gold inserts.

HTH, James

James MacPhail                   "Think not of engineering as art,
uo957_at_email.domain.hidden                 but of art as engineering"
Sigma Seven Systems Ltd.
james_at_email.domain.hidden        <http://SigmaSevenSystems.com>

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