It could also be M14 or the flux on the PCB has become slightly conductive.
A friend had M14 act wonky on his T102 recently. Time was screwy until it warmed up, replacing M14 fixed it. A M100 I just did was doing silly things with respect to the LPT strobe signal which (which comes from M14). M14 was swapped, no changed. Pulled T8 (strobe output transistor) and it tested fine. Reinstalled it and things ran fine. The flux used gets slightly conductive over the decades and I’ve seen it cause everything from phantom keypresses to PS not starting up, reset button not working, and the latest is the T8 issue. Jeff Birt From: M100 <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Stephen Adolph Sent: Friday, July 4, 2025 7:58 AM To: [email protected] Subject: SPAM-LOW: Re: [M100] M100 garbled screen looks to me like the 32768 hz crystal is dead. On Fri, Jul 4, 2025 at 8:56 AM Thomas Morehouse <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Friday update: Batteries replaced with fresh AA alkalines yesterday (Thursday). Left powered off overnight to recharge backup battery. Powered up this morning, but no change. See attached screen photo. The screen clock seems to be working, but date never changes from 1/1/1900. Top four lines of screen appear normal, but below that, definitely not normal. The "center" screen line consists of constantly changing characters. Lowest screen line appears to be reiterations of "Bytes free" - without the "Byt". None of the keyboard keys have any effect; when "cursor" is over BASIC, hitting Enter changes nothing - screen remains unchanged. I've done several Cold Starts (CTRL+Pause/Break+Reset) and (CTRL+Pause/Break+Power switch), but no apparent change. Note: when I do a Power On, the screen quickly shows the correct original default M100 screen, then immediately changes to the garbled screen. Onward through the fog! Thanks. Tom M.
