- Hey, Steve, how's it going? - [Steve] Pretty good, how are you? - I'm doing great. Hey, I got this crazy iMac prototype
that probably hasn't been turned on in over 25 years or something. Do you want to come over
here and help me fix it? - I'll be right there - Fantastic! Hey guys, how are you all doing? If you're new here. Welcome. My name is crazy, Ken,
and this is my buddy. Steve. Steve. It took you so long to get here. - Traffic was bad. I'm Sorry. - Traffic under this desk
is always a nightmare. So we have this really rare. iMac G3 prototype here with
us on the motherboard or excuse me, logic board. There was a, a header for a floppy disk
drive this computer when it went to retail, did not have
a floppy disk drive. In fact, this prototype
doesn't have one either. And there was also an
ADB-Apple Desktop Bus port, like hiding back here somewhere. It's like. - Behind the plastic. - They moved to USB and everything on the actual retail model, they ditched ADB, but this
prototype had that port on there, but yeah, it was behind the plastic. You couldn't plug into
it there easily anyway, but now we're going to try to
get it working and by we're I kind of mean mostly him
cause he's much smarter. So it does not turn on, but
Steve, you have some ideas. So uh let me know. What do you think you can
try here to get it working. - Yeah so, I mean, these iMacs unfortunately have
known issues with both the analog board, which powers
the CRT and the power supply, which powers the computer.
So unfortunately, due to the age of these machines
and that they really didn't have too much air flow in
them. A lot of them die, even the retail ones. So
since you have a retail iMac, that is of the same generation, we would take the logic
board out of this prototype, put it into the retail one and
see if we get any life out of it. - So full disclosure guys, like this is Krazy Ken's
Tech Misadventures, things go wrong. Not
everything always works. Like we may do some process
of elimination and some diagnosing, but this may be
a multi-parter or you know, it may not work by the
end of this episode, but it's still gonna be a
lot of fun. Glad you're here, Steve, and I'm glad you guys are here. Get ready to suffer. All
right, Steve, you ready? - I'm ready. - Let's do this. - Does this mean I have to
get back under the table? - Wow, Steve, this is kind
of a weird predicament. I feel like I'm drowning in plastic here. So this is the retail model of the iMac. You can see it's more kind of
frosted looking this one's the prototype more clear and
glossy doesn't have the EMI shielding in it and stuff. Okay. So the first thing we're going
to do is Steve is going to put the prototype board
into the retail iMac. - [Steve] And we're going
to guide it carefully, making sure that none of the
innards are flopping about. And there are a bunch of cables
on the left and right side. - [Ken] And while we were prepping this, we were poking around a little
bit and we did notice there was a new pram battery on the proto board. We also noticed there were some tester LEDs on the protoboard they're marked on the actual retail board, but there's just pads there
there's no actual LEDs. And also there was a soft power button, which we may try if we need to. - [Steve] Yeah. It's very interesting to see
the minute differences along the way. - [Ken] Yeah, absolutely. - [Steve] So I'm going to
plug all these cables back in. We have the infrared cable. We
should be ready to test this. - What's coming up next.
What are you going to do? - Well, I'm going to plug this thing in and see if we get any
signs of life out of it. We're going to push the
buttons and hope for the best. - And maybe we should
check that this is the, is the cord plugged into the outlet? - [Steve] Yeah it is. - Okay, Good. - And the power strip is on I assume. - Yes. - Okay. Cool. - Take it away. - All right. Let's plug her in. I heard something. - Oh. Wait. Okay. - For a second. All right. Let's try the front. Nothing. Try it again. Try the keyboard button. Let's try our soft power friend. Nothing. - Ooh. So does that mean the board? - Well, there was a bit of a rough connection between the
CPU and the socket there. So there could be something
slightly misaligned, but I think we could just
keep receding it and see if anything changes and we'll go from there. So the processor card plugs
into these two slots here, and one of them has
some broken off plastic. And so because of that, these pins are just sort
of hanging around here. So what I'm going to do is
try and just nudge them. So the processor card has these
two little notches on it and that goes into this little cage. All right. So that is seated. I'm going to borrow the clip
from your retail machine just to hold down this heatsink
in place a little bit. We'll try this again. - And Steve just told me that that fricking clip works as like a hook to take the memory out. Right? - Yeah, so if you take this clip out, essentially the service manual
indicates that if you use this little hook, you could pry this
little processor card up. Cause it can get stuck in
there a little bit rough. So you want to make sure that
you could loosen that properly without damaging anything. - Right. All right. So the process of card is reseated. Yep. And we'll just cross everybody part go. - So we're gonna try the power
button on the front first. Nothing. Keyboard, nothing. All right, and then soft power. Nothing. - Do we want to try the ADB keyboard just for grins and giggles? - I mean, technically the
software button should do that, - Yeah, I suppose. - And there's there's unfortunately there's not too much room. So I'd like to test your retail
board in the retail shell just to make sure that nothing
crazy went on when it was off for awhile. - This retail model now has the retail board back in it just to make sure it works. And there's no other weird
things with the analog board or the flux capacitor. - Fingers crossed. - Now the light's still orange. - There's no PRAM battery
in it. It might be unhappy. What we can do is just
take the board out again, do some magic, try, make it happy and. See again, at least we're
getting the power on of the CRT. So that tells us that the analog
board and the power supply are working. - Do you want to put
this battery in there? Maybe just for grins and giggles. Okay. Well here's something I never thought. I'd see an ADB keyboard
connected to an iMac, which the whole idea was
to ditch those types of IO. But here we are with the
prototype board and an ADB port. So we're going to try the
power button on the keyboard to see if we can get it to turn on that way. But we also did test a
few other things. Steve. - Yeah. So essentially what had happened, what we figured out with the
retail board is the processor card wasn't seated correctly. So once we receipted that the
machine booted up fine and it was happy. So we thought, okay, great. Now we know the analog board, the power supply board and the
CRT and everything is happy. However we want to of course
test the prototype board. So we're putting the prototype
board back in and although this soft power button is
electronically connected to the ADB port, we thought it doesn't hurt to
try and plug in a keyboard. - So the prototype board is
in, but we have the card here. We're taking this out just
in case if it's causing any issues, - we just got to plug the power in. - Plug the power in. And
I'll push the button. - All right. - Push the button, Frank. - All right here we go. - Here we go. And. - Let's try this guy again. I'm hearing like a, like
a buildup of something. Like almost like. - I, I didn't even hear that. - Okay. So if I unplugged this, - Oh, I heard it. - Yeah, see it goes away. - Yeah. - So there's some electricity buildup. There might be something on the
board that has bridged where something out of pin is
touching and it's just not happy and that's causing it not to start up. So let's take the tray out. So I want to take it out and
just see if there's anything loose underneath anything burned
or anything broken that we could easily say. - Before that, just your hypothesis. Do you think at this point, the analog board in the
prototype is a culprit at all? Or do you think it's something
with the motherboard? - Well, since the
motherboard is preventing this computer from doing anything, I would say we don't really
have too much to go on saying to the analog board in the power supply and the older one were faulty. Now we can test that by
putting in your now known good working logic board in that machine, - Into the prototype one. - Into the prototype chassis, just to see if the screen
works and everything else. - Okay, so. - Lets plug it in. - You open up the butter packet. You ever see that skit-the Popcorn Popper? Anyway, do you want to try
the, any of the buttons. On the other side? - Oh, that's right. This one has the. - Oh, it's missing. - Yeah so try that one. - Just in case it bursts into flames. - Oh, thanks. Well, I got, I got nothing here. - Nothing probe that
power button. You needed a pen to do it. - I do have a paint brush that
I used in the last episode, let me know when you're
ready for power here. - Yes, sir. - Go for it. - You have to put the re
the USB cord in three times. - Yeah I know, you spin it around. - And it's harder when
you're not looking at the port. Try again. Now it's very possible that
unfortunately something could have shorted out and it could
have damaged both of these boards and the logic board we're not sure. - Sure it could have. Yeah. We have low hopes about this idea, but just for grins and giggles, we're leaving it plugged in
for a bit before we turn the power on. I've had luck with
that with like much older Macs. Sometimes when the caps are crappy, you just got to leave it
plugged in for a while. So let's see if it does anything. Nope. Nothing here. - Try. it one more time. - One more time. - Over here. - Sure. Okay. Worth a shot. - I mean, we do see some stuff
on this side of the board and unfortunately, you know, we can't really take this
shell off to take a look at it. - Not practically - No yeah. - The clips and stuff on here are pain, but maybe we can find some
other solution later from some other Wiz that has a magical tool. - Yeah. I mean, I I've taken the back off of
one of these with some very soft plastic automotive tools
and basically destroyed the tools and the process.
And I still, you know, broke a clip or two unfortunately. - Yeah. I mean, this part
of this whole experiment is also like how much are we willing to potentially
accidentally break of the prototype and how much are we
willing to replace part wise? Because then it's not a hundred
percent prototype anymore. So there's, you know,
there's gotta be a, a line. We gotta draw somewhere
before we do too much, but. - It could very well be that
there are capacitor issues, both either on the analog board
or the power supply board. One or the other. - If this analog board was bad, but the power board was good, would the CRT wouldn't work, but would we still at least
get a fan or something? - So you might be able to
get the machine to turn on. And they're actually the DB-15 port, which is where you plug
the video circuitry into, on the tray loading iMacs. Like these, you can actually power the
machine and power and LCD or CRT to it. And you'd actually
see the image on there. So I've done that before where
the CRT is bad or the flyback is bad or there's something
wrong on the analog side of the system. - Yeah. So do you think, because we're not even getting
signs of life at all that likely the main culprit is
something on the power board? - That's what I would assume. Yeah. Because you're not hearing anything. You're not getting any power. Now, what we can do is we can poke
around with the multimeter on, let's say some of the ports on
logic board to see if there's any voltage coming
across. However, you know, this is a soft power system. So, you know, it depends on how the board
is manufactured and how the circuits are there if you're
going to get anything. But we could try that out. - Okie doke. All right,
so small change of plans. We did a little switcheroo. - Yeah, so we were trying it with a questionable power supply slash analog board, trying to
approach things we figured out. Yeah. That's not really
going to tell us anything. So we have a confirmed
working power supply, an analog board and monitor. I'm going to switch
this to continuity mode. And what this will help us
do is just poke around on the board. I know where
somethings are supposed to go. And when I make a connection, the multimeter will make a beep. And this tells us that something
is connected to something else so this gives power
to the hard drives. So the black cables here are ground. So if I plug the probe into
that little socket there and I touch ground and beeps,
which means that's good. So let me do that again. That should not be doing that. So ground is connected to voltage here, and that is certainly a no-no. - [Ken] Is it shorting? - [Steve] It is definitely shorting. Yeah. So I'm going to test
this on this board here, grounds my multimeter here,
and here's a ground here, so that's working good.
Now the same thing, the hard drive connector is right here. And I'm going to just probe that here. Okay. So that's ground to ground. Okay. Now this red connector
carries voltage here. This should not be grounding.
So let me probe this. Yeah, that is normal. We should not be getting any
continuity between that red cable and the ground of the machine. So even if I put the probe
right next to each other, this ground cable to here,
we're not getting anything. However, on this board, if
we do the same exact thing, we got a beep which tells
us something is shorting and connecting something that
it should not be doing. I think the next step is to
unscrew the logic board from this tray, flip it over and just visually
inspected to see if we could find out what's going on here. All right. So we took the board out of the
tray and flipped it over and everything seemed to be
okay. Out of curiosity, I started probing the board
again and discovered that the short that we found earlier
is no longer present. So if I probe the voltage rail
here to the ground port here, it is no longer beeping, which means there's no longer a short. - [Ken] So the issue
is coming from outside the board, most likely. - [Steve] So there's a piece that sits between the logic board and the power supply. And that's this here, you basically have the power
cable plugging in here. And there are pins on the
other side that plug in to the underside of the logic board here. So I want to see if there's
something wrong on this part or there's something bridged
here that may be causing that short. - [Ken] Yeah, I've never
opened that up before. So have, you? - No, I have not on this
one, but on others I have, so it should just be just
some straight headers and some caps, maybe some resistors. So we'll see. - [Ken] I figured to just update you while Steve is researching and some other stuff in this
housing, which, you know, I've always seen this hump, but I never actually knew what was under. It apparently is the power filter board. But essentially this helps
smooth out the electricity from the power board to the logic
board to help prevent any damage from erratic behavior. From those nasty electron
thingies that always jumped around inside a computer. Anyway,
Hey, I'm not a rocket surgeon. So this moves out the power. And if there's something wrong in here, if something shot this to hell earlier, that means the power coming
from the power board to the logic board is not
being filtered properly. And that is what maybe is
causing the short we'll keep digging. Okay guys, it
has been several hours. I think I have lost track of
time since we last added an update to this transmission. Steve, what sort of things have
you been testing? Nothing, super big discovery, right? That we couldn't even do it. - Nothing too exciting unfortunately - It's a little tedious. - Yeah. So essentially
where we last left off, we were playing around with
the idea that maybe this power filter board was causing the problem. But unfortunately, after testing them with the multimeter and probing them a lot, I don't necessarily
think that that's the issue. We did read a tip in the service
manual for this particular model. That does say, if you want to test to see
if the board is getting power test, these specific points.
So that's what we're gonna do. - So now Steve is testing to see if the logic board is getting any power from the
power supply. And again, we're going off of what the
apple service manual said to test, just to try to narrow it down. So we're not probing the
whole freaking thing like the aliens do to me every night. Hey, wait, I don't enjoy it. Anymore. - [Steve] And we get five volts. Okay. - [Ken] Okay. - [Steve] So voltage is
getting to the board, but for some reason, whether it be a bad chip, a bad capacitor, a bad connection somewhere, or a short, this machine is not powering on. - [Ken] So the next
thing we're going to try is the retail power filter board inside the retail case with the prototype board. Cause that's a
particular combination. I believe we haven't tried yet, - [Steve] But that's. Correct.
We tried everything else. - [Ken] We've been at this
around hours of losing track. - [Steve] What day is it? - [Ken] 50. So this is probably the last
thing we're going to be able to do right now with our resources. Like there's other tools and
stuff we can use that we do not have access to right now. So, you know, like I hinted at earlier, this is probably going to be a two-parter. - [Steve] Oh, it's
interesting to note that the power filter on the prototype has no metal shielding or protection at all. There's. There's just
some non-metal sticker on the bottom of this tray. - [Ken] Yeah, that is that's phenomenal. But Hey, it's a prototype. We don't need to have it perfect yet. - [Steve] Yeah, it
doesn't have to be safe. Oh, is this piece of metal
slightly different in size? - [Ken] Oh no. - [Steve] Oh no, - [Ken] Please don't I do not have the brain cells for this tonight. - [Steve] No, I think, I think we got it. - [Ken] Oh, Steve don't
toy with me like that. - [Steve] All right. So with that retail power filter in here, we're just going to test the
voltage and then we're going to try and turn it on. - [Ken] It's getting late
people. Gravity, gravity. - [Steve] Just a, just a little bit. A lot of things have been
going wrong tonight, but. - [Ken] Oh, that's to be expected. It's tech, misadventures,
crazy Kevin curse and all that. - [Steve] All right. So. We're still getting the same voltage. So at least that hasn't changed. I guess you can do the honors
of pushing the power button ken. - [Ken] push the button Frank. - [Steve] Ah Pooh, Sheesh Well, we did give it the old college try. - [Ken] Holy crap. What could
possibly be wrong still? - [Steve] I I'm guessing
there's some minor component on the board or just something that has failed
that on a component level, we would have to do extensive
further work to figure out what the heck is going on. - [Ken] And we're talking to
like under a microscope, right? - [Steve] For hours. - [Ken] Yay. Whoop de doo. So Steve, not everything
always goes according to plan, but I think thanks to your efforts, we help narrow down a lot of the problems. And now we know a lot of
what the problem isn't - Totally. - So that's good. So for
your value and effort, I'm going to give you one
authentic computer Klan, PopSocket. - Gee, thanks, Ken. - Yeah. You are welcome. Where can the friendly folks find you? - You could find me on
YouTube. I'm there as Mac84, feel free to subscribe and you
could also find me on Twitter and Instagram. My handle is Mac84tv. - Absolutely. And another special, thanks to everyone who
helped us with this project, responding to text messages
like a two in the morning on top of that, we know there's
other smart people out there. So if you have any suggestions
about what maybe could have happened or like what
we could try to fix it, feel free to leave a comment
and also check the description. We may have a link or something
like a blog post where people can submit other information too. - Totally. - And feel free to subscribe for more tech episodes coming all the time. I love doing episodes
about rare and retro tech, new tech, and of course, scam tech and stay tuned
because we will revisit this one day. And if you'd like to help
support the computer clan, plus get some awesome perks along the way, feel free to pledge my Patreon. Thanks in advance for your support. And if you liked this
episode, you know what to do. Thanks. And I'll see you next time. Catch the crazy and pass it on. (upbeat techno music)
