So, I got a near mint ASR-10 last night for cheap that has an issue.

When booting, it reads the floppy and says "Loading System" and hangs there for about 5-10 minutes. Then it will go to tune the keyboard and just hangs.

No trauma to the machine at all. Inside looks clean (cleaner than I have seen). Fuses are good. Voltages seem right on the analog board, etc.

It does the same thing when booting off SCSI (this is my 3rd ASR, so I had old discs). Wondering if bad RAM could cause this so I plan to order new RAM.

Biggest fear is that its the digital board (main board). I also considered it being the keyboard itself, but considering it freezes before it gets to the keyboard tuning portion, I'm not so sure.

Anyone ran into this behavior before?

I should note that I already moved the ram around, removed the entire digital board and re-seated everything on it, etc.

have you thought about just getting a brand new floppy?

http://12string.hostei.com/ASR10OS3.5Final.rar

Thats the image and works with USB drives but I think you need an ASR formatted floppy. I built that image my self but it works
Just use an ASR formatted floppy

worth a try!

Yeah. I've done that. Sorry I failed to make that more clear.

I've done new floppy images and old ASR zip discs that worked a couple months ago in my 88.

The thing boots and detects the OS fine, just "freezes" after that. I'm mostly concerned its the main board flaking out.

ram would be the first guess.
do you have two different sticks that you could try?


after that , i would suspect cold solder joints on the power supply and or the main board.

first look at the main board look for broken pieces of solder around all the solder side of the board. next would be the power supply.


keep us posted.


dave

i had the same issue.
Compleatley removed the external scsi jack from the scsi interface on the asr and pressed back in.
worked for me.

I have removed the SCSI board completely, replaced it with the 26 pin cable between the analog and main board, etc. Tried brand-new RAM yesterday.

No bad solder on main board. Voltages are correct at the regulators on the analog board. Next step is to dig out the power supply board before sending it off.

Glad the SCSI connector helped yours.

I have the Service Manual if you need it. Post an email and I'll send it to you.

JD Wilson
www.scsiforsamplers.com
New $89 SCSI Card Reader drives for your ASR! In Stock Now!

before sending it off, where are you located?


dave

shoot me an email.

russll661@charter.net

I'm in Phoenix. Your email address didn't seem to work.

typed it wrong. russell661@charter.net

but you are near the guy in LA that repairs them.



dave