On Sat, 1 May 1999 19:26:35 -0700 (PDT), Colin Wood wrote:
> recently, my SE/30 has decided to start doing something a little strange
> at boot.  when i first turn it on, it will come up with a bizarre
> checkered pattern (more grey than black&white), and it won't chime at all.
> i can hit the reboot button or power cycle the machine, but to no effect.
> however, if i let it sit powered-up for about 3-5 minutes, it will
> eventually chime and begin the boot process.
> 
> has anyone ever seen this before or happen to know what's wrong?

I've seen a similar (but distinct) symptom when I shipped it across
the Pacific from NJ to Japan.  The Dayster 030/40MHz accelerator
inside the SE/30 was smacked so badly it no longer functioned
properly, and I saw a checkered pattern with no chime when I turned it
on.  It didn't recover from that state until I opened it, took the
accelerator out of it, and installed the accelerator's CPU in the
socket (which turned it back into an 030/16MHz box )-:

Well, anyway, the fact that it starts working after 3-5 minutes makes
me wonder if its power supply is dying.  Or maybe its reset circuit's
time constant went berzerk.  If you have a volt meter, you might want
to measure Vcc to see if it has full 5V while your SE/30's showing the
checkered pattern.  If it appears OK, then you should measure the
voltage on 030's RESET pin.  The RESET input has negative polarity so
the low voltage (<0.9V) means reset and high (>2.4V or was it >3.5V?) 
means normal operation.

There may be other causes but that's all I can think of from top of my 
head.  Anyway, it definitely sounds like a hardware problem rather
than a software one.

Hope it helps,

Ken