Esteemed folks;

I recently acquired a IIci in a load of other Apple gear. It had been a developer's primary desktop for many years before it was shut off and stored.

When I powered it up, it came up to a straight grey screen (well, after I replaced the battery, anyway). No chimes, but a recap job fixed that. Otherwise, it still behaves the same way as it did before.

So, it chimes, waits a few moments, then comes to the grey screen and does nothing else. The mouse pointer doesn't show up, no flashing question mark, nothing. It doesn't seem to be the SIMMs, as I have been testing with a known good set. I have unplugged all the nubus cards and removed the SCSI and floppy drives, so none of those things ought to be the culprit. I can sad mac it with the interrupt switch.

One interesting item which may or may not be relevant, is that if I remove all the SIMMs, I get a normal chime followed immediately by the crash chime (as would be expected). But the beginning of the crash chime is garbled (abnormal). The last part of the crash chime sounds normal. If I hit the NMI switch, I get the normal sad mac with a code telling me I hit the NMI switch. But the crash chime here sounds normal, both the beginning and the end, as well as everything in the middle. So perhaps this is a red herring, or perhaps it's a smoking gun. I put it to you.

Before I start probing every trace and via, one at a time... any immediate thoughts on areas to check first?

Thanks!