Stupid Crystal Questions

[DiskChris]

Im having trouble installing the oscillator crystal...I think I have the orientation right (dot on crystal aligned with marking on board) but the crystal isnt going all the way way into the socket and I get a black screen on startup.

[Bamiga2002]

Maybe you have to cut some of crystal's legs to make it align properly. That's what I did.

[danbeaver]

Could you show some pictures of the problem?

[AmmoJammo]

It doesn't need to plug the whole way in to make contact.

But, why are you replacing the crystal anyway?

[DiskChris]

The old one fell out of the socket and broke once when I was messing around

[stefcep2]

If it was powered up when the crystal fell out you may have killed the CPU, resulting in the black screen.  And yes the crystal legs may not need to go all the way in depending on theor length.  Is it an Apollo board?

[AmmoJammo]

appears to be in the right way.

ah, how does a crystal "fall out" and more to the point, how does it then break? you could throw one at a wall and probably not break it...

[freqmax]

The mechanical properties of the crystal strongly influences it's signal properties.

[DiskChris]

appears to be in the right way.

ah, how does a crystal "fall out" and more to the point, how does it then break? you could throw one at a wall and probably not break it...

I must have caught it against the side of something....Somehow the crystal came out, and a pin broke .   Now I'm getting a white screen with a flickering power led....The only thing I can think of is the original crystal was 28.322 mhz and this one is 16 and maybe that's why its not working??  Its a gvp a3001 accelerator.

[DiskChris]

@stefcep2
It was off when it fell out (I had removed the board to get to something inside the case)

[danbeaver]

Just for the sake of being complete, try a new, identical crystal -- digikey has a HUGE selection.  The crystal has a corner that orients it to "pin 1" and there should be a matching mask on the board -- hence the photograph question.

P.s., are you sure it is the crystal that is "stupid?" ;-) :laughing:

[danbeaver]

As a side remark, I've found that a hot-glue gun is my friend.

[AmmoJammo]

I'm beginning to think the crystal might be backwards... but you didn't exactly give us a lot to go on...

[DiskChris]

The notch on the crystal was lined up with the notch on the board...

[AmmoJammo]

crystals don't have notches...
I thought you might have given us a decent pic by now, or at least told us what accelerator it is!