is it worth doing the takky mod in 2026?

[alectrona6400]

i am curious about this because i own a color classic with a seemingly dead motherboard, and i also happen to own a spare 6360 motherboard... i wanna hear your all's thoughts, i have the wiring harness from that 6360 as well so i may consider doing the mod because it's quite hard to find LC 520/550/575 boards now...

 

[finkmac]

imo not really

 

[adespoton]

If you've got the working components, and don't have a functional CC motherboard, I say, why not give it a go?

Personally, I stuck with the CC board mods and an accelerator when I was CC modding back in the 90s.

 

[Byrd]

It the modification is done properly it's a worthwhile upgrade. It's not just the harness/cabling switch but you will need to Dremel and remove more plastic and RF shielding than what you think. Full recap of analogue board, add the voltage regulator and cooling improvements are much needed. Once done it's quite impressive to see a PPC Compact Mac.

 

[alectrona6400]

yeah i'm really considering doing this because i need to put my 6360 board to good use, also i don't see myself getting a more proper board upgrade anyway seeing as how expensive and rare they are now

 

[Byrd]

I'm guessing you would quite enjoy doing the mod. The 6360 is a good choice as it wouldn't tax the CC analogue board too much.

 

[cheesestraws]

If you think it'd be good or fun, go for it! You can make the takky mod very neat if you put a bit of effort into it, and colour classics aren't rare enough (yet) to get all precious over. As @Byrd notes it does require some work on the plastics and shields, and that can be hard to make look nice afterwards, but it's not impossible - my takky looks really neat (I did not do it - you can tell because it didn't end up looking like a disaster) and it's a really nice little machine.

 

[beachycove]

I personally think the LC575 board makes a better machine, with a software hack allowing video at standard CC resolutions that do not make text illegible on the little CC screen. It’s a compact Mac; my preference is to keep it that way.

Mind you, I do very little gaming on any of these machines, which is the one advantage of having a 640x480 screen.

 

[Unknown_K]

It the modification is done properly it's a worthwhile upgrade. It's not just the harness/cabling switch but you will need to Dremel and remove more plastic and RF shielding than what you think. Full recap of analogue board, add the voltage regulator and cooling improvements are much needed. Once done it's quite impressive to see a PPC Compact Mac.

CC's cost $400 and up these days so modding one and screwing it up might not be a good idea. Are those cases brittle as hell by now?

 

[cheesestraws]

Are those cases brittle as hell by now?

Six of the sods have recently passed through my hands, none have been brittle. Those are from the UK and Japan; I cannot speak for other climates.

 

[IlikeTech]

Six of the sods have recently passed through my hands, none have been brittle. Those are from the UK and Japan; I cannot speak for other climates.

Can also confirm, not particularly brittle. Mine got smashed in shipping (really badly, not the plastic, bad packing) but has totally held up (prob 8 years ish now) after ABS welding it all back together.

 

[defor]

Having a done a number of tally mods, my response to that would be is it worth it, I think so, they are really fun machines when you shove a stupid amount of stuff into a small case like that. Kind of like what happens with SE/3- maxing. At the end of the day, though, what you get is not going to ever be any better than a 6500 at best in terms of performance or capability, in fact because of the screen resolution, you might even argue that it’s less useful.

I’m actually planning to take all of my systems and rebuild one when I have a moment into what I would consider the best option out there, and in the process I fully intend to add the video output port just so that if I get to the point where I can no longer really read the screen or whatever, I at least can connect to a nice large external display.

From experience, the most problematic part of working on these mods has always been notching the chassis. That’s sad, even if you do this, if you happen to have a donor harness around, that is separate from the original, you should be able to return the system back to stock no matter what.

In the modern day, I would say that there were two more pain points that I’ve run into personally.
- accidentally breaking the harness ribbon clips when building the harness
- accidentally breaking the analog board connector when reassembling it.

In both cases, if you do end up, breaking them, and obviously epoxy the parts together, should be careful so you don’t have to, but it still might be a bit of a gamble regarding those ribbon clips.

I think the question probably is most important to ask from a collectors market perspective.
- Firstly, do you even care about that. If you do, do you believe that the value of a nicely modded system will go up proportionate to a stock machine.
- Secondly, I feel like some of these questions are coming about due to the short availability of 575 boards which used to be the more desired to upgrade, at least in our circles because of the less impactful modifications needed. I personally find that high in 6500 boards are becoming harder to find in the last few years. I suspect the same 550/575 scarcity issue will eventually bring about the same situation.

At the end of the day, it’s your machine, do what you want with it.

 

[mg.man]

Can also confirm, not particularly brittle. Mine got smashed in shipping (really badly, not the plastic, bad packing)

Well... this is one of mine. Yep, super bad shipping = tossed in a box, NO padding whatsoever!

Still works tho!!

 

[Unknown_K]

A 550/575 isn't that much bigger than a CC and sticking a Presto Plus into it makes them a nice color machine.