Hello all, my name is William. But you'd best refer to me as GarbageMonster.
This is my first time posting! I'd like to say thank you for welcoming me into your community. I'm really excited to talk hardware and troubleshooting with enthusiasts.
Okay, so I've come across a Megatouch "2007", and I'm not certain if that's even it's generation. On one side of the cabinet it has a Megatouch Force 2007 decal, then on the other it has a "Powered by Megatouch Force 2008" decal. The software this machine is running is Megatouch 2008.5, so I assume the software has been updated before. Either way, it's the variation that sits on a counter top and has a spinner on the bottom. It should be the Megatouch Force 2007 model.
So, I'll start at the beginning. When the machine came to me it was having a hard time booting. It would POST and cycle through all of it's hardware checking, but after all of the [OK]'s, it would just go right back to the beginning of the process and loop constantly. I assumed the hard drive was corrupt or that it was going out, so I cloned the drive using Clonezilla and examined the data. I did my best to recreate the drive onto a laptop HDD I had laying around. Everything clones over except two of the partitions, something wasn't right about the cloning process and they didn't complete successfully. I used an IDE/SATA bridge to install the hard drive into the machine and did some hardware ordering. After a bit, it rebuilt some of it's own partitions after hitting the "memory reset" combinations on the DIP switches. Booted fine, I played some monkey game.
So, I go to put the thing back together the next day, assuming I had solved everything. But as I go to turn the machine on, the screen stays black despite the powering on sound and the static initializing from the monitor. I thought I had broken something putting everything back in order so I was very worried. I called a couple buddies and got their advice, then took the entire thing apart and put everything back together, being extra careful to secure everything everywhere. then I go to boot the machine back up, boom! Screen is working perfectly. yay, wonderful.
BTW- The screen has no appearance issues. The monitor has great integrity when it's on and warming up.
So, I think the machine is fixed again. I go to take it back to the man I'm fixing it for, do a test in his garage, no dice. Machine decided not to display anything on the screen again. Damnit, let me take this back. So I've been troubleshooting the hardware for this machine and I've noticed some distinct symptoms.
- The machine does not display an image on the screen after it has been plugged in and turned on previously.
- If the machine is unplugged and left to sit, with the power switch left ON, the machine will power on and the monitor will work fine.
- When the monitor decides not to work, a green light on the Remote Adjustment board turns from green to orange. I will post pictures of this "remote adjustment board" because I don't think these come stock inside of these machines.
- When the machine starts correctly, the motherboard gives a beep indication at the exact time the light decides to either stay green or turn orange.
- Unplugging the machine and leaving the power switch on resolves the display problem. Typically it does not fault once it's up and running correctly. So! I suppose I'm focusing on the power flowing into the machine, the screen displaying images, and the potential issues that could yield these symptoms with tube monitors such as these. So far I haven't noticed any bulging capacitors, but I haven't inspected the lower boards yet. The one detail that throws me off about this whole situation is that the computer hardware seems to coordinate itself with the screen display symptoms with timing and a beep code. So far, I think, the beep code has only been one beep.
Also accessing the BIOS my keyboard locks up and won't participate in navigating the options. I don't have another legacy keyboard to use here, but I have successfully gone through some of the options for five seconds or so before the keyboard stopped working.
I know this is a lot of information.
But I'm sure it will be a fun thing to think about.
Thanks for reading!
I ended up getting some CRC errors from the new hard drive.
I'll fix that after I fix the screen issue.
Will.