68010 from HELL

[Bill Mayhew]

Hi,

When I got home from the office tonight, Unix PC 3b1, greeted me
with a totally black screen -- even with furious mousing.  Hmmm, I
went to the other room and tried dialing in from the PC6300.  Lots
of ringing, but no answering going on.

I surmise that the cat(s) must have jumped on the keyboard and sent
the kernel into oblivion, as furious keystroking is reported to do.
Nothing to do, but grit my teeth and cycle the power with out
shutting down.

With power back on, I am greeted by a screen of

____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____
    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____
____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____
    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____


from the very top to the very bottom.  The pattern was very
regular, not like random trash that would be sitting around in
memory from a random power up.  Actually, the dashers were closer
together than I can render them as text.  In fact it looked like
they were about one raster line apart.  The dahes appeared to be
about 16 (hmmm) pixels long.  Absolutely no disk seeking.

Does anybody in netland know if the dashes are a significant
diagnostic event?


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!

--Bill