Acquired: LC II and Apple SC CD-ROM

[coius]

I was talking with a friend today and I asked him if he still had a few things he told me about a while ago (old mac hardware). I picked up today:

Macintosh LC II w/ Unknown RAM (2 sticks kingston), 160MB SCSI HDD, Floppy and PDS Ethernet card.

As well as an AppleCD SC CD-ROM (Caddy load). I don't have a caddy so I bought one off of ebay. This is an Apple Original. The items are pretty yellowed. The caps on the LC Might need to be replaced, however the Battery has not exploded. The PRAM battery looks to have expired on 1998 for the expiry date. So it probably wasn't the original. that said it wasn't a Maxell battery. It was made in france, looks no-name generic.

I haven't tried them but even though I gave a majority of my vintage stuff to Eisenfaust, I still have a keyboard as well as DB-15 to HD-15 (VGA) so I will try that tonight. Pics will follow of course. I will see what's on it or off the hard drive still works. If it doesn't, I am sure I can get a 9.1GB to work in it. I have a 68-pin drive but it would need an adapter.

 

[coius]

AppleCD SC looks like this:

 

[coius]

More pics

 

[TheMacGuy]

How did you get it connected to a flat panel display? Anyway, nice score, especially since it was free!

 

[coius]

Used a DB-15 to HD-15 adapter with switches. It's set to Mode 1 and 640x480. Would've been nicer if I still had my 4:3 display (1024x768/800x600/640x480) but that was stolen in the honda disaster. I set it manually to a 12" 640x480 mode. So it's locked in that mode. My monitor won't do the 512x384 mode, so the lowest I can do is the 640x480 on LCD. It's doing 256 colors.

The LC II is very slow compared to most other macs. Even the LC III and Performa 450 is much faster. Click responses are horribly slow. I need to reinstall the OS but I am going to have to see my friend Eisenfaust to make the appropriate stuff. I also need to get the CD Caddie so I can put the installers on a disc.

Oh for the records, it's an AppleCD SC Plus CD-ROM.

 

[LCGuy]

Yep, even back in the day people complained about the speed of the LC II. When the LC III came out, I seem to recall it being marketed as twice as fast as the LC II. We had LC IIs in our classroom in Grade 7, a friend of mine had an original LC back in those days, he said that his original LC was quicker than the school LC IIs.

 

[TheEisenfaust]

So coius, did the g34r that I lent you work out? I'm really hoping that it worked out. :lc:

 

[coius]

No Eisenfaust. I am going to need that powerbook. the LC II won't boot from CD, and the SC Plus won't read burned discs. I also have no extension. I will need to use your powerbook to make a localtalk network to install. Please call me if I don't get a hold of you first

 

[uniserver]

a friend of mine had an original LC back in those days, he said that his original LC was quicker than the school LC IIs.

Wow i didnt know this , what a turd

http://lowendmac.com/lc/macintosh-lc-ii.html

benchmarks show the LC II is slightly slower than the LC. Go figure!

 

[LCGuy]

Still...given that it was the first model of Mac that I ever used...I must give credit where credit is due.

 

[TheEisenfaust]

So last night when I left coius with some gear and warez, it seemed that he was able to get the machine going with a network boot to my Wallstreet (huzzah for LocalTalk) running OS9 that I outfitted with a floppy drive for boot disk making, and a CD-ROM drive loaded with the Apple Software Recovery CD. Should be up and running shortly I believe since I last saw him doing a full install of 7.5.3.

:lc:

 

[coius]

Well, I ran into a snag. First, I did get a SCSI dvd-ROM drive mounted with CD Sunrise. It didn't like my CD of the software for the installs. The second thing is that the AppleCD SC does not recognize discs. I cleaned the laser with alcohol and a q-tip. no change. I also used a pressed CD. It just spits discs back out.

Third, the LC II internal HDD keeps spinning down which when I press on certain areas for the power cable for the HDD, the HDD will spin up or spin down. I suspect a cold solder joint. So I am probably going to bust out my iron and redo the solder connections on the logic board and the hard drive to see if I can get a stable connection.

Eisenfaust, I am probably going to have to get one of those Sony 8x externals from you, or I am going to have to try a different type of CD-R. the DVD-ROM drive doesn't like the discs I have. it does however recognized pressed. Not that that helps when trying to get a specially made disc working...

That might be the reason I can't boot. Oh also, Eisenfaust, the CD-RW drive I got from you is toast. it does not read discs period as well

 

[uniserver]

I must give credit where credit is due.

Oh for sure... For sure.

Trust me I have love for the LC II. viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20798

When I called the LC-II a Turd, I guess it was because of my disappointment with apple.

I did not know that the performance difference between the LC and LCII was so marginal.

As i'm sitting here, I have Five LC I's in my collection, Four LC II's, Three- LC III's.

Some side benefits (from what i gather) of the LC-II over the LC-I

_ Has 68030 cpu /w MMU

_ Has a spot to solder on a FPU - http://www.shiga-med.ac.jp/people/sugimoto's/mac/lc2.html

However, another usage for old 68030/040 Macintoshes is a Unix server with NetBSD. It requires a 68882 FPU to run NetBSD steadily.

I didn't know you could run netbsd with only 10mb ram :-D I guess the fact the 68030 now supports virtual memory, your good to go. (slowly)

_ Has a "Tweaked" video circuit to better handel VGA and multi sync monitors

_ Has 2 more meg of ram 4 total

I know the whole point of the LC was COLOR! However If you run them in Black and White. WOW do they become ultra responsive in GUI!

6.0.8 or 6.0.8L Scream on these. 7.1 is not half bad either.

The Macintosh LC-II was the second mac in my vintage mac collection. Also I think the LC-II was the first vintage mac I recapped.

Yes, when I got it the sound worked, but there was this loud Ever Changing PITCH Squeal thing going on.

I left it on over night, in the computer room and the wife said she was about to go in there and smash it.

Sure enough it badly needed a re-cap viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19776

 

[TheEisenfaust]

I bet it works just fine, just not on that LCII... xx( OK I'll just have to phish for moar drives I guess lol. I'm kinda running out of options tho for internal SCSI rigs since a ton of drives are IDE/SATA. We might have to tear apart that project closet of mine for a complete external SCSI rig. I know I have one, I just don't know where.

 

[coius]

Sorry for the late reply. I tried to solder the HDD and it didn't go for power. I am guessing either caps or bad solder points on the LC II board for the HDD. If I press on the cable to the HDD for power, the drive will spin up or down. It's possibly a loose joint somewhere, and I will take a crack at a later time to the molex adapter on the LC II logic board.

Right now it's shelved as I have to work on a project for another friend of mine that the HDD logic board went belly up (in smoke as well) to recover the data. I got a replacement board on ebay, but it seems that the previous one started doing random writes when it fried and took out the partition table. I am using a tool to piece the information back together and rebuild the data, but it's slow going. I am estimating 93% data loss over the whole drive due to corrupt writing (the drive would spin up and chatter but it wouldn't read. Looks like a tri-ac on the board blew. I found the chip crumbling as if a surge hit it.)

So for a few days the LC II project is on hold.

I did find a SCSI CD-ROM in my collection (8x CD-ROM from apple) that I was able to mount the CD I had and I did get 7.6.1 installed on the LC HDD. It's an 80MB Conner SCSI drive. very slow. I got the LC to mount the CD by taking the network access disk, getting rid of the networking stuff (chooser/extensions) and stuck the CD-ROM extension, as well as the HFS and Foreign File Access extension on the floppy and booted from it. It allowed me to read the CD-ROM.

Oh and I also found out the LC II boots from CD. The disc I have however doesn't have a system folder so it wouldn't boot from that (hence why the DVD-ROM wouldn't boot from it).

So it has an OS, and Ethernet card, 8MB RAM, 256KB VRAM (256 colors @ 640x480) 80MB HDD, sound works, no whine. probably needs to caps replaced (from power issues I guess unless it's a cold solder joint) and the floppy works great (no stiction/etc...)

Looks to be a good unit, if a bit slow. I might play with the AppleCD SC Plus later by tweaking the laser settings. it might be out of sync or not strong enough. I have to tear down the whole drive for that, but I will try it nonetheless.

I will be back later to report updates. Thanks guys and thanks eisenfaust for letting me borrow the powerbook G3 to get what I needed going. It was a big help. Oh and Eisenfaust, I was able to recreate your 7.5.3 install floppies but i had to replace several floppies (I transfered the labels) because at last 5 of them were DOA as far as floppies go. So you have a 7.5.3 install set, just some of them are not original. I did not do the extras though. I would need more spare floppies to do those.

 

[TheEisenfaust]

Eh, I can always get more. I have tons lying around to use for replacements. Heck, I think you have all of my spares come to think of it. I'll have to show you which ones you can use for replacing them. Thank God for electrical engineering professors that support your legacy hobbies!

 

[twocargar]

My Father-in-Law had an LCII (my then fiancé, now wife's old one), and the ADB stopped working on it. He insisted I fix it instead of buying a new Mac, so I found another one on eBay for $10 shipped. I swapped out the HD and RAM and it was back to how he wanted it. :lol:

I love that SC CD-ROM. I haven't seen one of those before. Nice score!

 

[CelGen]

The easiest way to know if the drive is aware of a CD being loaded is if it spins the disc when you insert the caddy. A disc will not spin unless the laser detects the reflective surface. If it can't find a reflective surface it will not bother with spinning up and spit the caddy out. Double check that your optics are clean.

 

[coius]

I did a cotton q-tip with alcohol. The laser is clean, I think the laser strength is off though. either that it failed. The disc does not spin as at. It injects the cartridge, then it ejects it after like 3 seconds. I might be able to take the top off and insert without a disc and see if the laser comes on. If it doesn't (which at those times the laser was visible to the naked eye) I could tell if the laser works or not. I think it might be out of focus. I had an issue with a CD-RW drive that I tweaked a button that tuned the laser (either strength or adjusted the focus) and it worked. I have done it on laptop optical drives. I just need to play with it.

I do have a CD-ROM that works though. I obviously want to fix the AppleCD SC drive mechanism first. Failing that I can replace it with a CD-ROM from like a centris 610 or something which has a caddy load. Either that, or a caddy-load CD-RW drive which I know they have.

Eisenfaust, I will be calling you tomorrow to hash out what we will do next. I owe you a beer for borrowing the equipment. I say it's Crescent Moon time!