Broken 2000XL Troubleshooting

Hey everyone, I've scoured the internet for answers to my issue, and although I've found people with the same problem, no one has been able to offer up any solutions. I just purchased a broken 2000xl with a friend for $150. When I turn it on, the screen just shows white, and all the leds light up and stay lit. There was a previous thread here awhile ago http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=158368 where someone had the same problem, but no real solution was given. At this point I've opened it all up, disconnected everything, removed all the boards and cleaned them, and then put everything back together in it's proper place. I have a lot of experience with electronics, soldering, etc. And by my eyes I can' t see anything visibly burned out or abnormal. I re-soldered a couple things that looked a little loose, but none of that helped. I think it might be the boot eprom on the panel pcb, but before I go out and buy a new one, I'd like to see if anyone has any advice. I also noticed the blue socketed IC chip mount on the cpu board, but from my research that is only used by technicians for repairs and testing etc. The only thing I haven't done is checked all the voltages coming out of the power pcb, which I will do when I get home. Here's a video from the other users thread of the problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9K9Gh6fiBs

Thank you for any and all helo you can provide, really trying to get this going asap!!!

Just remembered a little bit of potentially helpful info. The previous owner said it worked fine before he accidentally hot swapped it, and it has a non hot swap drive. After that is when these issues started.

shana wrote:Just remembered a little bit of potentially helpful info. The previous owner said it worked fine before he accidentally hot swapped it, and it has a non hot swap drive. After that is when these issues started.

I am far from an expert. But if I remember when I installed my hot swappable CF reader the first boot attempt had the machine get stuck with the LED's and the LCD just froze and all lit up. I thought on my general PC knowledge and checked the jumper settings. I think the jumper had come loose or fell off even. I put in the right position and all was fine.

I realize you're saying a potential worse possibility in the non swappable having gotten swapped while powered up. I don't now the full extent that that could mess things up but it seems it could be potential critical failure/permanent damage to the CF reader.

So I just wanted to share my experience as it might indicate that the CF reader is where to try to address the machine instantly locking up. Do you have a zip drive you could drop in there to test?

Currently there is no storage drive of any kind installed. I'm picking up all of the previous owners readers and cards tomorrow.

shana wrote:Currently there is no storage drive of any kind installed. I'm picking up all of the previous owners readers and cards tomorrow.

Not positive but that would seem likely to keep the XL from finishing booting. It probably gets to the point where it needs to communicate over the IDE connector and finds nothing and freezes.

Anyone else?

If I have an IDE/ATAPI reader connected to the MPC IDE/ATAPI cable/connector, but not powered up, it does this same freeze with leds and white screen at boot.

If I remove the non-powered IDE/ATAPI reader from the MPC IDE/ATAPI cable, it then boots correctly again.

Are you sure you have tested it with nothing connected to the internal floppy connector, and nothing connected to the IDE/ATAPI connector, and nothing connected to the SCSI connector, all at the same time, with these three internal sockets empty?