Recent content by MattB

My Kanga has recently begun exhibiting extremely odd behavior. It will not boot unless it has a charged main battery, the AC adapter is not recognized by the system , and if I plug it in without a charged main battery the green sleep light glows steady green. The machine has no PRAM battery as I...

The only machines I have right now are running 7.5.3 and 9.1, so I’ll probably hold off on trying to use the disk until I can go get my 512K.

I was going through a box of old floppies after getting a floppy drive for my Kanga and in it was this old 1984 copyright Macintosh System Disk which I believe was from a family member’s old 128 or 512K. I didn’t want to try to read it in the Kanga since I’ve heard of newer drives causing issues...

How far does yours get on the welcome screen, and will it boot with extensions off? Mine seems to crash on the actual loading screen itself from time to time, though it boots properly after hitting command-control-power to force a restart. I think I’ve traced it to a software problem with some...

The biggest killer of these machines seems to be plastics and PRAM batteries. I have two Kangas that both suffered leaks from the PRAM batteries. I cleaned both boards and was able to save one, though the other just makes a click noise and displays the green sleep light. I’ve got replacement...

Darn. Guess I’ll need to find either a complete assembly or a dead 190 or 190cs to take the screen off of.

As a side topic, what keyboard do I have in my machine? The "enter" key doesn't look like the normal one on a US keyboard. This machine was a recycling find at my high school, so I don't know much of its history.

My 190 is in good shape and boots perfectly, but has a few problems. One is a main battery that cracked and leaked. The machine will likely never run on battery power again, but that's not a big issue. The big issue now is that it's fallen victim to "SpindlerPlastic" syndrome and the plastic on...

My working Kanga unfortunately has loose hinges - the screen stays up fine but it wobbles and any pressure can send it slamming shut. The plastics are all good (save the usual missing port doors) so I think the hinges/clutches themselves may be worn out. I’ve sourced a set of NOS replacement...

I haven’t really heard of capacitor problems on PowerBook G3s of any type. Does it have a failed PRAM battery? Machines of that age tend to have leaky PRAM batteries and I’ve pulled them out of every machine of that vintage that I own.

I got the Japanese version working on Windows 7 and there really is a lot that we didn’t get in the US including new items for the maps that we did get. Some of them are easy to understand even without knowing Japanese but others (like the Christmas map) are unplayable without knowing the...

Anyone else remember Yoot Tower? It was the lesser known sequel to Maxis’ SimTower. The Japanese version received a number of expansions which sadly were never localized to the US.

I remember on my family’s Mac LC with System 7.0 the name was Macintosh HD. On a Performa 575 with System 7.5 (the last version pre “MacOS logo” that I also had growing up the name was Hard Disk.

That’s a great idea. I have Spelunx both on Steam for modern PCs and the original install disks for the black and white HyperCard version somewhere. The documentation definitely suggested more rooms were planned, and the game itself includes more tunnels that dead end where more rooms would be...

One of my Kangas has a screen latch that seems to be broken. When you slide the latch it doesn’t spring back into the closed position. Do the springs on these things break? I’m assuming I have to disassemble the top cover to get to it.