Did I KILL my rare vintage Mac clone?! 

Maybe reach out to Steve from Mac84 about this, he’s a wizard when it comes to vintage Mac stuff

I would recommend you don't feel bad about this. You did the best you could, took good care of it, and treated it well. It is almost 30 year old technology. The fact it works at all is amazing. And that looks like an intense cpu card anyways. It is possible heat just killed it.

We're with you, if you need to bury it and get an alibi we're here to help.

Could you use a thermal camera to spot the processor that is not working?

Dos dude might be the guy to call

One thing that might be work trying is an oven reflow The stress of the heat sink may have cracked other solder joints, so heating it in the oven could reflow them, potentially fixing the board

This was a MAJOR effort to repair the fault. Cleaning, re-soldering, even 3D printing! But sometimes these chips do go bad with no apparent external cause. I recently put an SSD in my old 2012 iMac from storage and it suddenly stopped booting. Cause was a faulty RAM chip, which I never even touched. If it makes you feel any better, back in 2015, I restored a beautiful example of a PowerBook 180c. Cleaned, recapped the screen, replaced the drives, new memory, the works. I took it apart to get some pictures of the inside and in doing so, tore the tiny and thin display cable under the hinge that is unique to this model, instantly bricking it. Unfortunate, but not terminal as I had another 180c for spares with a cable. And then I tore that one too... I had to wait many, many years for another working one to come up on ebay at a reasonable price, during which the 180c collected dust. It had to be working one to prove the cable was intact so I didn't just buy another useless machine. I even spent a lot of time trying to make my own connector from scratch.

Could be a bit strange, but have you tried to start the Genesis without the heatsink installed? Just to see, if maybe the heatsink is attached with to much force, so that the CPU-Board is slightly bended and makes no contact to the mainboard.

Might be worth grabbing or borrowing an oscilloscope, grabbing the datasheet for the Motorola MPC952 PLL driver, and check if all frequencies are there. Maybe a broken connection related to the clock signals could keep the CPUs from getting a clock frequency, which would obviously keep it from doing anything.

One of the first things that suffers from PCB warping are SMD ceramic capacitors. These kind of details cracks very easily and when they crack, it almost certainly leads to short circuit. You can find broken one with multimeter in continuity mode.

Seems to me like a broken trace on the cpu board due to the heavy bending. This would explain the reseat working/non-working issue too. But could be hard to detect

I would look into the resistor packs, the quad ones on the back. With the board flex, those could very easily be damaged. They're known to die on PCI cards all the time.

Apple only allowed Mac clones for like a year or so. You did a good job troubleshooting your issue but all along it was the quad CPU card. Either there is a bad CPU or you have a microfracture in one of the traces of the CPU card. Without a powerful microscope, it would be hard to detect. You could try to replace the primary CPU on the quad card with a known working CPU to see if that fixes your issue or eliminate the CPU being the issue.

I'm wondering if those nylon washers are supposed to go between the CPU card and the heatsink. That could explain the card being warped.

If you can be bothered and you suspect the "primary" CPU has failed, you could always try de- and re-soldering the CPUs in a rotation. So U1 goes to U2, U2 to U3, U3 to U4, U4 to U1, etc. to see if you can isolate an issue. If that reveals a dead CPU (or 2 or 3) you could always try salvage the CPUs from other Macs and drop them in. If that fails, then there's likely bigger issues at hand.

$14,295 in 1995. Adjusted for inflation, that comes out to $28,618.98. Excuse me while I grab a shovel to pick my jaw off the floor...

I have a mac laptop, is the only mac I only have in my life, since I live in Argentina and macs are not so commond. I disassembly it a long time ago, and broke some things (I wasn't so experienced nor seen a lot of videos like this) and then, time crashes the screen, and now is just a big paperweight. I still have it, as a reminder that it existed. Anyway, kisses from Argentina and I enjoy your videos a lot, keep it going.

Interesting video! Have you considered that the slightly warped expansion card may not be properly seating in the card slot? If one or more of those metal connections along the card edge isn't mated with a corresponding pin in the card slot, then that would explain the boot failure. It would also explain why reseating the card worked... until it didn't. Removing and replacing the heat sink may have worsened an existing issue with the warped card. The solution might be to either A) straighten the card somehow or B) tighten the cardslot somehow.

I appreciate the honesty sadly its good to show the actual issues that can be faced now a days with these kinda machines you’re really one of the only guys that does this especially with Mac’s keep it up!!

DayStar seems like a silly name for a high-end workstation, until you ask, what is the one star you can see during the day? The Sun!

Sorry to hear about the machine. I was stoked to see that one of my BlueSCSI brackets lives in it!

THANKS for making the STL Available!

Did you check all the 'via'? the connections between the two sides of the PCB? Almost certainly one or more of the vias near the connector is broken.

Nah! Don't be afraid to take things apart... sounds like it already had a problem. I don't think you broke it. It's possible that someone could fix it.

Coming from your follow up video, you can spot the busted connector @12:59!

11:24 That's a cool little 3D printing hack, thanks!

Awww I feel for you. I've deffinitly sunk hours into repairs that went nowhere. Could you Try to determine which processor is the primary one and simply swap it with another on the board? Sure it'd only be a 3 cpu card, but at least it might boot?

First, thank you for the isopropyl alcohol soak porn shots. Second, you're really good at making us feel good about a bad ending. Appreciate you and all of your content.

Soul destroying stuff, I really feel for you Colin. I managed to kill my PowerComputing CPU card back in the late 90s. In my case, I suspect it was static electricity that did it.

Great video which I'm sure was not easy to make. I see you checked the PSU to the CPU card, but I wanted to ask if you checked all those rails under load.... probably best done with a scope. Also do you know if the power to the CPU card is further down converted and if so if any of these rails are sequenced? It's really work making sure the power supply is solid as without it nothing will function as I'm sure you know. Not sure if this helps,, best of luck!

that's the main reason why i don't take apart electronics anymore. like my grandfather says if it works fine let it be and don't mess with it

I know the feeling, my Voodoo Banshee inexplicably stopped working recently and I don't know why 😢. Nice troubleshooting and thanks for the vid!

Did you not try the quad CPU card without the heatsink? Also, you really should add a thermal camera to your toolkit

Maybe because the CPYU board has a slight bent, the pins don't have a good connection with the motherboard slot... Had you tried to use the card without the heatsink to see if the bent in the cpu card is the problem?

Just wondering, did you ever try the card without the heatsink? Even at least seeing if it fit a bit better since it was bending from the pressure of the heatsink?

Is it possible that voltage regulation is the culprit? I don't know enough about add-in cards to say for certain but it might be an external problem to the CPUs themselves

if it problem with one of the dies, heat/cold could help locating the problem. I assume you checked all the other components on the cpu card? there could be cracked SMD's, and those are really hard to detect

Too bad but you give a really good effort to try to repair it. If anything at least you made a video documenting it so it will live on that way. I’m a Mac fan and I knew about clones but I had no idea about the quad clone.

check the tantalum caps on the back side of the cpu card. use a continuity tester, should chirp at most, if its a hard short then they need to be replaced. Common for old tantalum to fail short.

Great work again.

I have a 9500 with a dual processor card. If you run BeOS on it, it uses both processors and runs in SMP mode. Worth doing a video on it.

Shot in the dark: Remove the heat sink, clean up the cpus. Install it, power it on, just for a minute, and use a thermal camera to see if there is a chip on the board that is hotter than the rest. My thought is that it isn't the CPUs but another chip on the board. If worried about the CPUs, get some individual heat sinks to attach temporarily. Actually, attaching some individual heat sinks might take the strain off of the board. You mentioned that the dual processor came from another unit. You mentioned that the motherboard is the same as another unit. Have you tried the quad in another unit? Case wise it might not fit, but what f you took the motherboard out of the other unit, put it on some stand offs, and tried it open air to see if the CPU works in another motherboard?

@ThisDoesNotCompute a quad CPU setup is going to need some quality power. Was the power supply tested under a load for sagging voltage or other issues? Perhaps run the processor card from a secondary power supply? Booting on the second power up is also something that happens with failing/edge case power supplies.

With how that PCB was flexed and the previous owner's trick of removing and reinstalling the card... I'd say broken internal trace and a fundamental design flaw with how that heatsink stresses the board. You could maybe look up some specs on that edge connector, presumably something exists given how the form factor was used by multiple manufacturers? check that every pin that should be connected is connected.

Sorry you’re having these problems. This looks like such an awesome computer that I’ve never heard of before and I want to try to find one very badly lol with four processors even though it’s from 1995. Is this able to play RU-vid videos or run Linux? I’m not sure how much testing you did while it was still working. Thanks I love your show.

Did you tried the quad card in the other machine that had the dual cpus

Try putting the cpu board under some heavy books(or something else more professional for applying preassure) for a week or two until it de-bends, then try again without the heatsink just to check if it boots.

Ok Final suggestions, Did you check the solder joints on the power connector to the CPU card? (I imagine you did, but didn't mention it in video.) I'm banking that you are most definitely right with the cause being from the card warping. My "broken for parts only" Neo-Geo MVS board had failed from that, luckily in it's case it only broke SMD solder joints, was just a 4-layer PCB (bottom, gnd or pwr plane, opposite plane, top), and was easily fixable. Hopefully this isn't a 6+ layer PCB and you don't have broken traces in the middle of the PCB. Also I'm not sure what happens to the decoupling capacitance if the middle planes break from flex. It's a very weak capacitor, and is only used to filter out voltage spikes/noise, but maybe it's enough to cripple the CPU. Would be neat if there were someone willing to "x-ray" the PCB for you. Oh, You never really gave me a good view of the back of the card (unless I missed it), although I'm not sure if there's really anything more to spot. From the end shot it looks like it's just a bunch more inductors. During video comment scratch: I keep pre-typing suggestions, then you do them. 😅 8:34 That cap directly next to it looks ready for replacement too. Though I suppose in the perfect world you re-cap the entire board with SMD Tantalum. 10:20 Tantalum should also last you forever. I'm surprised you have electrolytic caps on hand, since they have a shelf life that eats into their service life.

Wow colin big wow, amazing effect buddies. Best video so far for me. PS does PCBway fix boards

Could you put some plastic washers in the heatsink mounts to correct the bend in the pcb? I feel that some trace in there has pulled apart, and maybe getting the board straight might be enough to keep it working for demos etc

Don't beat yourself up, Colin. I have done similar things many times. These are a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation, with hardware/machines of this age.

I'm sorry that happened. I've heard stories about some 604 packages being fragile, and I suspect that was all this was. It wasn't your fault, as it was going to fail eventually. Hopefully another card will surface, and that wonderful piece of Daystar engineering will be up and running again.

Measure and inspect the resistors on the bottom side of the board. The warping could have caused a resistor to fracture or its solder to crack. I would pay particularly close attention to the solder joints on those resistor packs, the like to crack on the edges. It looks like the debug connector at J3 is an SPI programming header for the Lattice PLD, you could trace out the pinout using the Datasheet online. The other connector is probably some sort of manufacturing test header, it looks like some pins go to U6, but I can't see what that part is.

Colin, did you try to reflow the entire cpu card? Another thought.... does the angle of the processor card return to normal when you remove the heatsinc? Maybe a slightly bad connection on the motherboard is made worse with the bent cpu card and has gotten to a point of not making contact. Maybe try to run the cpu card without the heatsinc attached and see what happens. Just a thought. Thanks for the great video's and don't feel too bad about it. We've all been there.

of the 4 processors do you know which one was the shall we say the lead chip' is it possible to move one of the chips to the main chip position ? you have hot air could you flote one off to see if any trace's are under the chip ??

I one killed a very rare Silicon Graphics workstation by connecting it to an ungrounded socket 😱

I recommend testing each trace with a multimeter. If you can find the broken one, you might be able to use a jumper wire and fix it that way. Also, I recommend modifying the heatsink so that it causes less stress. (Seems like the legs on the side are too long, maybe sand them down a bit?)

Didn't see any mention of the power connector on the CPU card in the vid. Was that reflowed in case the solder joints developed cracks from all the connect and disconnects?

Did you check over the Passive Delay Line's or the 44mhz oscillator ?, My moneys on the oscillator. Put it on the scope when its powered up and use the frequency counter measurement function. I edit: Similar delay line spec sheets say they have an internal fuse. I would honestly start by checking them and the clock source if I was in your shoes. I probably would have ripped the oscillator off and feed it externally off a signal generator during testing.

One (stupid) question ; Did you try to put the CPU card in the machine but without the heatsink ? Maybe the weight of the heatsink (i don't know of what material it is made but it's look quite heavy) is one of the possible culprits of the failure since the warping of the board. You don't have to let it run for long, just enough to let the chime sound if removing the heatsink does something. After, one of the possible solution, but it's really long and with the possibility of "unobtainium" components (I don't know if we can get BR new PPC 604E chips and there is an unidentified IC on the board), it's to do a Reverse Enginering of the card and replicate it new.

Did you check the clock signals for the main processor?

Wait.. could you solder on some new processors to the quad card? 604Es should be easy to find right?

Giving you gentle pat on the back for support. We all feel your pain.

Can you swap the processors around on the cpu board and see what that does? Or are they keyed to that cpu io?

Wow, another useful video, keep it up...

I suspect your diagnosis is correct. One or more of the CPU's on the card has failed. Perhaps send the card to a repair shop with surface mount tooling (Northridge Fix or similar) that could either remove and resolder the CPU's or perhaps find four matching ones to replace them?

Could you find known working 604es to swap? Maybe even faster ones if the bus isn't a bottleneck. Would make it pretty unique. Stress fracture that's just hard to see makes the most sense to me though... Bending the board slightly is sketchy but may reveal something, maybe a crack in a trace that can be bodged around.

i had a dec alpha die, it sucks. I picked up a thermal camera to try to pinpoint stuff, but all I saw was a lack of heat, so who knows what it is or where to go. rip

I'm surprised the CPU card from the 9600 is compatible. I know Apple licensed the tech from Daystar, but didnt realize they used it without any chonges.

If the computer is very old but still working don't touch it let it keep working. That's what I always think when i working with old system at my job. I hope you find somonoe that can help you with this awesome machine. Thanks for sharing. 💪

This seems like a job for dosdude1 to tackle. They could probably fix it, not sure if they are headed to VCFMW maybe you could discuss it with them? Seems like it be a decent collab/commission

Bummer. I think the enormous heat sink may have been too heavy for the PCB. If it is any consolation, I don't think that ad which claimed with four CPUs you could run Photoshop four times as fast was accurate. Even though I think that Photoshop had been modified to support multiple CPUs at the time, adding CPUs typically does not scale 1:1 in performance. There is always overhead in doing task scheduling and contending for system RAM, bus, and hard disk access, etc.

I'm suspecting cracked solder joints, it's old and has served many years. That bend on PCB looks nasty and I wonder if it's not making good contact with the mobo.. Could you check the voltages when the card is in place? Maybe someone like NorthWestRepair could reflow the whole board and check the traces, then transplant working CPU from a card that has same CPUs

Just some sparse thoughts: - i see another big chip other than the 4 cpus on the board. Did you rework it too? - to test if could be some cold boot issue you can try to leave it on for 10-30minutes to heat up and then restart it, or heating the board while on. - did you check the voltages with the board installed? the psu may be too weak for 4cpus but still enough for 2. Measuring with no load is almost pointless.

If I may be so forward: You seem like the type of guy to have a mate, even if they're hidden in the recesses of your FB friends list, that can examine hardware at that level and test it on a bench or something. I wonder if there are clones of those chips somewhere . . .anywhere . . .even in an FPGA arrangement . . . to help breathe life back into that system.

You gave that computer a life for it's last golden years. More than you can say about 99,% of other computers

Mabye some traces got cut/lost connection because of the bending of the cpu card.

I know this feeling too well, but don't feel bad because it wasn't your fault. You did the best you can and maybe someday you'll find a fix. I'm still holding on to my childhood 486 motherboard which recently crapped itself in hopes that I might one day resurrect it.

Watched a video of PCB damage that can occur with very heavy modern GPUs and it reminded me of this. In that case the pads of the chips had been ripped off by rough handling and the weight of the thing. Maybe there could still be something like that happening in this case as well instead of a whole CPU being dead.

why not swap out the processors on the card with known good ones? or find out which is the primary and at least change that 1? been waiting for an update, i love this pc! still havent found one tho!

I dont see that you tried the quad core in one of the other working clones. Could you try that?

I wonder if it's possible to disable or hault certain CPU's within the bios or something on this computer? I'm sure your idea on a fried CPU is correct!

What model microscope is that? Super cool :)

Is it just my eyes or did the edge connector to the actual CPU board look a bit warped? What’s the likelihood that there’s a couple of copper pads not conducting through the logic board CPU socket? That would explain why the other CPU daughter boards are working fine but the quad board isn’t?

Hey Colin have you heard of the Gemini it runs Mac OS and had a touchscreen but was portable like a PowerBook ? My friend Amber owned one for school

I'd love to see if some other hardware youtubers can help debug this issue. I think there's hope of at least learning what's wrong. That debugging port _looks_ like a pretty standard serial interface.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. There's always a risk (not RISC) with old machines that this can happen. But the educational value of the videos and what you personally learned about the machine makes it worth it. Besides, one day you may have a technician's epiphany and suddenly realize that the problem was hiding in plain sight. Also, whether it's a successful repair, or a vain attempt -- I'd rather watch someone who is being honest.

I'd like to see you demonstrate one or more of the Orange PC cards. They had a long history from the 68K Nubus years almost until Apple switched to Intel CPUs. Most of the Orange PC cards contained all the bits and pieces of an IBM clone, but the final PCI slot models were mostly just an x86 CPU onna card and used software to emulate the rest of the hardware due to the G series CPUs and RAM capacity of the later Macs being able to handle those tasks. Of course with the switch to Intel, a PC card was no longer needed to run PC software since one could simply dual boot the Mac with Windows.

Don't feel too bad about taking the card out. It was neat to see how they built quad core boards back in the day.

What about finding replacement CPUs to solder in?

IBM chips in that blue package are pretty fragile. Not only PPC CPUs die, but also those IBM DACs which were used in many professional boards, like Number Nine Revolutions and such. IBM RAM chips from that time are fragile too.

That sucks but don't let it get you down. And don't let it discourage you from working on older tech in the future.

Plot twist it was a broken solder joint on the processor card

So you took a look on the front of the board with the cpu’s but never checked any components on the back of it? Just a hunch tho, but try to check if something might be wrong on the backside of the cpu board

nothing ventured, nothing gained.... don't feel too bad about what happened!!

At 7:30 when testing a power supply you should test it under load because if an output capacitor goes bad (and those go bad a lot) it might provide the correct voltage to the multimeter but not to the board. Hope this helps!

Could it be that the CPU card has any cracked traces that could be fixed with bodge wires? Just a hunch.

0:05 what CCTV were you using?

what a mammoth of a beaste, nice work maticulously unearthing it for all of us to marvel, we dont need to see this beaste run, just seeing it in the silicon is amazing, all that braun, so little brains, what a historic time.

Was it working before the paste change?