68kMLA Classic Interface
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| color classic grey screen | |
| Posted by: falen6 on 2026-02-23 13:46:13 Hi folks. Got a color classic recently - powered it on and it chimed and gave the display of the flashing disk icon the logic board was in a terrible state - amazed it even chimed. recapped the board with tants and gave the board a much needed clean put it back in and powered it on - chimed and display took out the logic board and re inserted it a few times and the hard drive was working , booted all the way to desktop powered it on later on and all i get is a grey screen ..BUT the machine boots to the desktop and plays some sound (same sound it played when it got to the desktop when the display worked) so i have a CC thats working but the display is grey i thought it would be the memory chips , but if that was the case then the machine would not continue with the boot have not opened up the machine to even look at the analog board am i just unlucky that after the recap initally worked , the analog board decided to act up !! | |
| Posted by: falen6 on 2026-02-23 16:07:30 have read that the 256k vram is the 2 chips next to the vram expansion slot - ive checked and reflowed them - still the same - i guess this is why the machine is booting regardless of the video problem took the back cover off to have a look - machine is very clean inside - checked the big slot connector for the logic board and it appears solid and clean i have replaced every cap one by one from the recap just in case one was bad , but still the same machine is responding to keyboard commands to shut down , to restart its just a video issue volume and brightness controls on the front all working the machine came with no ram or vram expansion simms have gone over every solder connection with powerful magnafying glass......... cant see whats the problem is the board is spotless now , front and back | |
| Posted by: falen6 on 2026-02-23 17:01:05 got a display with pram reset , by pressing command , option , P,R and power at the same time ........ but with artifacts on the display as the mouse moves i dont have a battery installed on logic board as i dont have a new one.......... machine powers with no battery installed - have read many conflicting opinions with batteries on CC | |
| Posted by: falen6 on 2026-02-23 19:36:43 still have the problem - hasnt given a display for last few hours - pram reset not making any difference now ive checked all the caps with other new caps , and soldering is clean and accurate the amount of cap goo that was on this board when i got it was unreal i used liquid hand soap , toothbrush , sink and water - gently cleaned entire board , suds galore ! , rinsed , repeated 3 times used acetone all around caps removed im wondering if its possible the cap goo ended up under chips and is causing problems im back to power on , chime , grey screen , then hearing harddrive booting to desktop playing some silly sound........ but just a greay screen and no mouse pointer wtf !!! | |
| Posted by: falen6 on 2026-02-26 19:34:06 aparently this is an unsolved problem for CC's reading this thread 
Color Classic motherboard woesI'm picking up a project I've been sitting on for some time. I have a Color Classic that doesn't want to boot. When I press the power key, the light will come on and the hard drive/fan will spin up, but there's no chime or image on the CRT. It's definitely not trying to boot because I'm not...
tinkerdifferent.com
same problem , except im getting a chime and the machine is booting ......... but screen is just grey , no mouse has ANYBODY !!!!! had this problem .......... jesus its driving me mad - it has to be something stupid so far - i have taken off the old caps , removes old solder , no pads damaged , washed the board over and over , then with acetone , then with iso , recapped with tants .......... i get grey screen ........... then i replaced the caps one by one with other new ones ........ on the edge connector i have remove all the old solder and replaced with new solder have gone over all the vias i can find reflowing their solder reseated the 2 roms a dozen times checked the analog for voltages by soldering on wires to various points to read the voltages everything is as it should be this dam thing was working when i first got it ive recapped dozens of macs ............. this has me lost ANYBODY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! | |
| Posted by: falen6 on 2026-02-27 08:10:02 went through everything in this thread , but it didnt help me might help someone else though | |
| Posted by: bibilit on 2026-02-27 09:57:50 The Egret is most of the time the issue | |
| Posted by: falen6 on 2026-02-27 10:42:54 I took it off , cleaned the area with iso , checked the continuity between all the vias under the chip to their local pads ........ all seems fine just took off U5 and did the same , all seems fine ......... put it all back and still grey screen the video memory is seperate from the onboard 4mb has to be something in there gonna make a short vid this is doing my head in !!! | |
| Posted by: croissantking on 2026-03-05 06:51:07 @cheesestraws - maybe you could donate one of your many surplus CC boards to this user? 🙂 If I had to guess - I’d say it was a rotted trace or via in the video circuitry area. A photo of the grey screen would be useful - I’m imagining 1-bit grey, like a checkerboard pattern. | |
| Posted by: falen6 on 2026-03-05 08:54:35 Hi folks Been working at it on and off for a while and im 99% sure my problem is rotten vias around the vicinity of the caps as people have pointed out machine still not working I tool off U7 and metered the pads back to the vias and they all looked ok - but i didnt check continuty to the other sdde of the board , so put the U7 back what i did notice was the solder of the vias in these areas looked different to the rest of the board , grey/tarnished so i took a fine sharp pin and started gently scratching at the via's only to discover it was flaking away like powder the pin would start going down into the via with great ease at least .5 mm then i noticed the green lacquer coating would easily flake away from the vias exposing the copper , so looks like the electrolite was well on its way to eating through the via entirely So I decided to start 'digging out' the via's with the pin from both sides on several vias , then applied flux and used the pin to get the flux deep into the via from both sides and finally reflow this resulted in dead machine , nothing tried again then boot back to grey screen tried again and lost sound tried again sound back and all i was doing was reflowing vias i take it this board has several layers internally , and not being able to read scematics i have no way of cinfirming of a via is properly connected to all its internal connections i hate this kind of thing I have been contacted by a member here in europe who has a working board for me , so i should be good folks but dam it , ill kick this thing's azz !!! heres a few pics you can see some of via's on the second pic around C49 ,C52 , L5 , solder gone , laquere gone , copper exposed - this is around the sound section , was the same on the other side around U7 wow , I never taken a working machine and killed it by cleaning it !!!! | |
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