68010 from HELL

[Dave Levenson]

In article <1102 at neoucom.UUCP>, wtm at neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) writes:
...
> Well, quite on a lark, not knowing what to replace, not wanting to
> pay $1200 or whatever it is for a new motherboard, I decided to
> replace the 68010 CPU chip since that was the only chip in my junk
> box remotely resembling any of the chips in the Unix PC.  Slap the
> baby in there and Sha-zam,  Gol-lee Sgt. Carter, it boots up like
> nothing happened (aside from about 10 min. of furious fsck'ing).
>
> Moral of the story is that if you live dangerously like me without
> a service contract, and you experience this symptom, try replacing
> the 68010 before you fork over $1200 to AT&T.  Total cost of
> repair: $8 + wear & tear on heart due to massive rise in blood
> pressure + lots of AT&T-oriented blue language.  Whoever designed
> that stupid 3b1 case deserves at least 40 lashes with a wet noodle!

It frequently turns out that disassembling and re-assembling is
enough to "fix" it, whether or not you actually replace any parts. 
Yes, opening up the 3B-1 case is a bear, compared to most other
desktop computer systems.  Therefore, you may not want to go through
that again.  But if you ever feel like trying, put your original cpu
chip back in the socket.  You'll probably find that the system works
just fine with that, too.

The big question, of course, is what was fixed?  If it's not clear
what was fixed, it's not clear what was broken -- which means it
won't be any more clear when it breaks again.

-- 
Dave Levenson
Westmark, Inc.		A node for news.
Warren, NJ USA
{rutgers | clyde | mtune | ihnp4}!westmark!dave