No dumb questions? Maybe this one…

[CTB]

Everything from LC to LC475 all had the screw. I do remember a batch of Performa 400's that were delivered without the screw. We had to send a screw to each school who requested them.

 

[joshc]

Thanks for your insight on this. Hopefully it clears up the mystery at least somewhat.

 

[CTB]

Keep in mind this was my experience with units coming from the Singapore factory. Things could have been very different for units coming out of the Cork factory.

 

[joshc]

Yeah, that’s fair. I expect there were variances. But… the whole LC series having screws makes sense given their target market of education.

 

[Phipli]

Thanks for your insight on this. Hopefully it clears up the mystery at least somewhat.

Remember that (unlike here in the UK) "LC" was the education series in some regions, Performas sold to home users might have been sold without screws in some regions.

I guess basically we can't know for sure in all regions / markets.

But it sounds like they fitted a screw to all the educational units and with good reason!

 

[joshc]

Yep. We can’t know for sure unless someone was a fly on the wall in every Apple factory on every day of pizza box Mac production, in every country.

 

[dougg3]

Everything from LC to LC475 all had the screw.

Keep in mind this was my experience with units coming from the Singapore factory.

Thanks for the inside info!

 

[croissantking]

I’ve had ex school mice before where the mouse ball cover was glued on, presumably by the school to stop that from happening.

How were they supposed to clean the black gunk off the rollers if the ball cover was glued on?

 

[Phipli]

How were they supposed to clean the black gunk off the rollers if the ball cover was glued on?

Lasers

Everything can be solved with lasers.

 

[joshc]

How were they supposed to clean the black gunk off the rollers if the ball cover was glued on?

Good point, but my guess is they probably had so many mice / could get them cheap enough that they would just replace them if they became unusable.

 

[CTB]

Apple Service had a part number which was a bag of 100 mouse balls.

 

[joshc]

Apple Service had a part number which was a bag of 100 mouse balls.

I love these little bits of knowledge that have been lost to time. Stuff like that is hard to know unless you were involved/familiar with it at the time.

 

[Arbee]

Yeah, that’s fair. I expect there were variances. But… the whole LC series having screws makes sense given their target market of education.

Also the LC and LC II had the Control Panel disable jumper so schools could lock kids out of messing up the system settings. But that didn't last long as a feature and Cuda dropped it entirely (it was only possible on Egret-based machines, and not all of those).

 

[mdeverhart]

Also the LC and LC II had the Control Panel disable jumper so schools could lock kids out of messing up the system settings.

Wait, really? I had no idea that was a thing! Which jumper is it?

 

[Arbee]

The jumper block is between the battery and the floppy connector, at least on the original LC. The pair of pins closest to the battery should be labeled "CPE", and jumping them should disable the Control Panel.