"Yes Doctor; The patient survived the transplant."

"Thank you nurse."

Whew!

I had decided a while back that when I had the time, money, and patience that I would
upgrade my IIc to ROM04. Now this is a 1985 IIc with an Applied Engineering ZRAM Ultra II
carrying 1Meg of ram and the original ROM01 chip installed. I forget what year the ZRAM Ultra II came out (I can check the AE website now), but as soon as they hit the market myself and my best friend Rick went down and bought 1 each for our IIc's. We sat up into the night installing them and had lots of fun doing it.

It just so happens that he is an electronics person and I am a mechanic so he wound up teaching me everything I knew at the time. lol

I went up to Reactive Micro and picked up 2 ROM04 chips for a VERY reasonable price and while I waited for delivery I took out the IIc and started my disassembly and cleaning process. I downloaded the changeout instructions from Reactive, then read them over in preparation for the upgrade. In order to install the new ROM the ZRAM must be removed along with the keyboard. I also loosened the ROM01 chip, but did not completely remove it from its socket.

Now; as I said before, I'm a mechanic, not an electronics person, so when it came to following the instructions to solder together a circuit in one area of the motherboard and then actually cut the circuit in another area, I became concerned. I have always tried to follow the wisdom of "If it ain't broke, Don't fix it!" lol

Now in all fairness, I waited to do the actual slicing, dicing, and soldering until the chips arrived and were test fit to make sure everything was fine.

Once the new ROM was in place, the soldering and slicing were completed as per the instructions, and everything was put back the way it was supposed to be, I started up the computer and it wouldn't run. It did power on, but the disk drive did not work.

I disassembled the computer again, removed the keyboard and the ZRAM, and pulled out a magnifying glass to take a look at the soldered joint and the sliced area. The solder looked fine, but the sliced pad did not look like the cut was wide enough and could possibly be shorting, so I used my trusty Xacto Knife and widened the cut. I checked everything out again, put everything back together, reassembled the case, plugged her in, flipped the switch, and she came right up like normal. (Big Smile

I ran a few diagnostics and she passed them all with flying colors.

So. Now I have a IIc with the ZRAM Ultra II AND the ROM04 Upgrade. Which just goes to show that even a part time computer geek and full time mechanic can perform operations to make things better and be successful.

"Yes; The patient survived the transplant and is doing well."