kkritsilas
Well-known member
I just received a Centris 650 from a local surplus place that I actually found on eBay.
Machine appears to be a 1993 unit, and it is said to chime when powered up. From the outside, the plastic front and rear plastic covers have yellowed considerably (closer to orange, actually). The machine has 4MB RAM soldered in, a floppy drive, and hard disk and hard disk tray, as well as the CD ROM are not present. There is a NuBus ethernet card in the middle slot. i opened it up, and after a little bit of effort, was able to remove the inner metal work and power supply to get access to the motherboard. This was necessary in order to remove the PRAM battery, which remarkably showed no evidence of leakage, but I also think it was replaced at sometime, as it green and white, brand is SAFT, and it says 3.6V and Lithium on it, along with Made in France.
Now the questions (because my last 68K Mac was a IIVX, and I have forgotten a lot of stuff):
1. Without a HD, what is the easiest way to verify that the motherboard is OK? I think I should try to find a bootable floppy, preferrably with some diagnostics on it, or get an OS disk set (which I will eventually need, anyway). Is there a preferred diagnostics disk, or OS version? i haven't powered up the machine yet, as I don't have an ADB keyboard, and from what I remember, I need an ADB keyboard with a power button to start the machine.
2. The idea for this machine is to verify that the motherboard is OK, then get a SCSI2SD adapter with a 16-64GB uSD card. Can I make use of all 16-64GB of storage, and is there any disk size limitation imposed by the version of the various Systems? in other words, will
getting System 7.5 impose limitations on volume size, where System 8.1 will not? Or should I just try to get a tray and a rotating SCSI drive? Seems like the costs for either option are pretty close.
3. There are two unkown to me slots in the machine. One is inline with the outside NuBus slot, and is in front of it (towards the front cover) and looks like a card edge connector. The other is near the 72 pin RAM slots, and is slightly offset from the 4 RAM slots. What are these slots?
4. is there any place outside of eBay to look for the SCSI tray and drive, and/or a SCSI CD-ROM?
Kostas
Machine appears to be a 1993 unit, and it is said to chime when powered up. From the outside, the plastic front and rear plastic covers have yellowed considerably (closer to orange, actually). The machine has 4MB RAM soldered in, a floppy drive, and hard disk and hard disk tray, as well as the CD ROM are not present. There is a NuBus ethernet card in the middle slot. i opened it up, and after a little bit of effort, was able to remove the inner metal work and power supply to get access to the motherboard. This was necessary in order to remove the PRAM battery, which remarkably showed no evidence of leakage, but I also think it was replaced at sometime, as it green and white, brand is SAFT, and it says 3.6V and Lithium on it, along with Made in France.
Now the questions (because my last 68K Mac was a IIVX, and I have forgotten a lot of stuff):
1. Without a HD, what is the easiest way to verify that the motherboard is OK? I think I should try to find a bootable floppy, preferrably with some diagnostics on it, or get an OS disk set (which I will eventually need, anyway). Is there a preferred diagnostics disk, or OS version? i haven't powered up the machine yet, as I don't have an ADB keyboard, and from what I remember, I need an ADB keyboard with a power button to start the machine.
2. The idea for this machine is to verify that the motherboard is OK, then get a SCSI2SD adapter with a 16-64GB uSD card. Can I make use of all 16-64GB of storage, and is there any disk size limitation imposed by the version of the various Systems? in other words, will
getting System 7.5 impose limitations on volume size, where System 8.1 will not? Or should I just try to get a tray and a rotating SCSI drive? Seems like the costs for either option are pretty close.
3. There are two unkown to me slots in the machine. One is inline with the outside NuBus slot, and is in front of it (towards the front cover) and looks like a card edge connector. The other is near the 72 pin RAM slots, and is slightly offset from the 4 RAM slots. What are these slots?
4. is there any place outside of eBay to look for the SCSI tray and drive, and/or a SCSI CD-ROM?
Kostas