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MacNiels' Conquests

MacNiels

Member
Hello all! 

After being an (inactive) member for quite some time, I recently picked up collecting again. Time for my first real post!

I received a Quadra 840av last week. It was a bit of a gamble, as it was untested according to the seller. The only thing he knew was that it chimed. The photos showed some rust down the bottom vent holes, so worst case scenario could be a battery explosion. I had no idea what to expect, but the price was interesting enough to take the risk.

Here it arrived, in a box without any foam. Oh my! The only protection was a piece of cloth… Given the brittle plastics of these machines, I feared the worst.

Deep breath.. time to open the box and see if it's in one piece:

2-BoxOpen.jpeg

Surprise: no damage at all. I could not believe my eyes. No cracked bezels, no CD ROM bezel that fel off. Phew!

Even the power button was intact. Respect to the Dutch mail workers (and a LOT of luck)!

It was quite yellowed and dirty, but otherwise the machine looked pretty much stock, even the NUBUS slot covers were still on.

Do you guys know if this form factor has a nickname? I know we have the "outrigger" (7xxx/G3), curious about this one.

3-Qfront.jpeg4-Qback.jpeg

3-Qlogo.jpeg

Time to open the machine, before even attempting to power it.

Yup, the bottom plate was completely rusted. Further inspection confirmed my thoughts, the battery had indeed leaked. It had been taken out already.

5-QopenRust.jpeg

Miraculously, the logic board looked clean. Very little corrosion, no cap leakage either. The only corroded area is where the battery acid seeped down. Thankfully, the Q840av 's battery location is somewhat good, right at the bottom, so very few components are in its way.

Only the area around G7, RP62 and L32 looked affected, right in the path where the battery acid ran down.

Do you guys know what the function of these chips are? G7 appears to be a clock oscillator.

LogicBoard.jpeg

Ok, time to power it on…

6-MacOSloading.jpeg

A loud chime, that’s a good sign! Followed by a blinking question mark. Appears the stock 500 MB Seagate harddisk (Apple branded) was dead. Let’s see if the CD drive works. It did! It booted right up from a MacOS 8 CD. The UI seemed to feel a little more snappy than my Q650. Would that 7 Mhz really be that noticeable? The only 040s I've owned were 33 Mhz ones, which feel snappy with MacOS 7.6, but a bit sluggish on 8.1. I’m curious how it performs once the machine has been restored and set up. “About this computer” revealed a whopping 16 MB of RAM, although VRAM has been maxed out. Since all the NUBUS slot covers were present, I assume this Mac was totally stock.

My plan is to restore this Mac to its former glory, which is already in progress. Things I've done so far:

- A full teardown

- Clean the logic board, the case and the battery gunk and the rust

- Make a new bottom RF shield

- Ordered a new PRAM battery holder.

Future plans are:

- Replace HD and add extra RAM

- A recap (while the Mac is working now, I assume it's just a matter of time)

- Maybe a retrobright. Not decided yet. Since the machine is pretty much stock and doesn't have any personal stickers etc, I might as well go for it. Had good results restoring a G3 MT and an SE/30.

If people are interested, I can make a report about the restoration progress. :)

Regards, 

Niels

 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
Please do make a thread about the restoration process!  They're always fun and a lot of useful information turns up in them.

 

Byrd

Well-known member
The best sign about an 840AV is that it actually does something - yours does substantially more than most which is great news!  The 840AV does feel faster than any other 68K Mac - in the day that extra few Mhz was noticable, along with a snappier video subsystem.  A faster speedy HD, or SCSI3SD V6 will also make it fly along.

As you restore the machine you'll notice the caps are located around the very fine pitched custom ICs on the board; take time deep cleaning the before recapping noting the caps in these are possibly the most leak prone and damaging around.

 

LaPorta

Well-known member
This will be a restoration thread to watch. Best of luck with this, and hope to see it documented!

 

landoGriffin

Well-known member
I just went through my 840av and recapped it. There were soooo many traces that had been eaten away. It looks like a pile of spaghetti on one part of the board!

Glad to hear yours is working! I love my 840av!

 

MacNiels

Member
As you restore the machine you'll notice the caps are located around the very fine pitched custom ICs on the board; take time deep cleaning the before recapping noting the caps in these are possibly the most leak prone and damaging around.


Great tip! And yes, I've noticed the very small ICs, looks like a complex board. 

I had to disassemble my 8200 to check some bezel parts and noticed that board is a lot simpler with bigger ICs, even though that is a later machine.

Due to time constraints I couldn't upload any restoration progress pics yet, I'll do that over the weekend.

Niels

 

Daniël

Well-known member
Very nice it still works, many 840AV with just bad capacitors don't work anymore, let alone one that has had a really bad battery leakage. I guess it slowly seeped out over the years, instead of exploding like some do, thankfully! I look forward to seeing it being restored.

And yeah, that seller's packaging isn't super great. The LC I got from him, which had a chunk of the top case missing, was also shipped in a piece of cloth... but without a box around it. They just wrapped it up in a plastic bag, then taped it up, and shipped it like that. Not the slightest bit of added damage, so PostNL for all its flaws does seem to handle packages with some care!

 
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