Friday, December 12, 2003
Been back to the school twice since the last post. The first time I struggled with a 7250. I knew it had a bad CD-ROM, so I replaced that and loaded OS 8.6 from CD. But then when I tried to get other software over the LAN, the ethernet interface proved flaky. It is on the logic board, so I removed the 7250 to the repair area and replaced it with a 5200.
Yesterday things went much better. I completely prepped another 5200 as well as a 5300 and a 5400. There are 6 more power macs remaining in the repair area: a 5400 and a 6500 just need to finish loading software; an 8100 that needs both a new CD drive and a new or cleaned floppy drive; and the 7250 for which I will try to find a pci ethernet card or a new logic board.
There is a 6100 which was marked "flaky" last time I checked it. I know where some 6100 logic boards are being discarded, so I will try to get 1 of those plus an ethernet dongle and a replacement CD drive for the one that was scavenged.
That leaves just a 5500, a very nice machine when working. But this one has a bad HD and no comm slot II ethernet card (it was scavenged), and no red from the monitor! I have some more IDE hard drives and can probably find either a pci or csII ethernet card. To fix the red, I might try re-soldering connections on the video card which works for this problem on the 15" multiscan monitors.
