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CJ's miscellaneous finds

cj_reha

Member
In my vintage computing adventures, I've been acquiring more Mac-related equipment as of recent, and since this forum has a dedicated category for posting about stuff you find in the wild, why not start my own?  :beige:

To start off the thread, this beautiful Color Classic came in the mail today. A friend of mine is acquaintances with someone who is closing their e-waste facility, and was willing to let him sort through all the excess inventory left over at the warehouse before he sold it to other companies to get melted down. Said friend posted a picture of this system and a Classic with sticky notes advertising them as $50 each, and long story short, the guy accepted $35 for the Color Classic. Sweet! It even comes with a complementary ethernet card (which you can see in the second photo).  ;-D  It even has a label declaring it as property of the University of Vermont...hmmm...

As the note on the front indicates, it did not power on when I first received it. Thinking that corrosion from the capacitors was probably causing the ADB ports to not work properly (and by extension, the power button on the keyboard), I gave the board a good scrubbing with isopropyl alcohol. No dice.  :'-(  After some more disassembly and removal of the analog board, I spotted a particularly nasty looking patch of capacitors situated right next to the yoke connector (third picture). After desoldering these caps and checking them, they all tested OK, however...I didn't trust them. Just to stay on the safe side, I perused my bag of various caps salvaged from junk boards and found suitable replacements (picture 4). Crossing my fingers and hoping for no smoke, I flipped the switch...it worked! The machine booted right to the flashing disk icon. Success! It needed a bit of convergence adjustment, but nothing else too major.

I've since fully recapped the logic board and cleaned up the floppy drive, so the system is ready to go. I just need to source a SCSI hard disk for it, since the original (plus the caddy, which is an annoyance  :p ) was removed. Disk swapping is not an enjoyable activity on any operating system past System 6 or so. However, the system works flawlessly otherwise, and I am super happy it turned out so well.

More updates soon, as I have a few 512K's in the mail with some neat upgrade cards installed.

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jupo

Well-known member
Do you know if it's the same drive sled/caddy thing as the 5xx series? I have a couple extras.

 

cj_reha

Member
Do you know if it's the same drive sled/caddy thing as the 5xx series? I have a couple extras.
I'm...actually not sure, sorry.  :sadmac:  I can open it up tomorrow and grab a picture of the "track" which the caddy slides into, if it would help.

 

cj_reha

Member
It's been a little while since I last embarked on any conquests, but recently a pair of packages came in the mail bearing gifts! Namely a pair of 512K's with some neat upgrades.  ;-D

The first system that arrived is a 512Ke with a Computer Care Mac Rescue RAM/SCSI upgrade board installed. This is, in my opinion, one of the most useful upgrades one could get for a Mac of this vintage. It allows the user to upgrade a 512K to up to 6 (!) MB of RAM - 4 MB for the system, and 2 MB for a RAM disk that could be configured in software (although, unfortunately, this software is nowhere to be found these days  :`( ). It also adds an aforementioned 25-pin SCSI port in the battery compartment. My Mac Rescue board came with 1.5 MB installed, bringing the system to a total of 2 MB of RAM. I find it interesting that the SIMMs installed also Computer Care branded, a nice touch in my opinion.  :smiley:

The Mac Rescue upgrade board uses the somewhat unreliable KillyKlip connector to interface with the Mac, and consequently, when I first got this unit, it only displayed a checkerboard pattern. However, a reseat of the upgrade board made it spring back to life, and it works flawlessly! The system is amazingly clean inside, and I didn't need to do any work at all to get it to work stably. Very glad I was able to find one of these interesting upgrades... its simplicity makes me think it might be possible to reverse-engineer at some point in the future.  :cheesy:

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Jinnai

Well-known member
oh, I have that upgrade board in my 128k, it's a very nice one. There is, somewhere, a bracket and adapter board that mounts a 50-pin hard drive vertically behind the FDD, that would be nice to have.

 

cj_reha

Member
Apologies for the very late post, but here's the other 512K I picked up a little while back. This one is pretty beat up and obviously led a hard life...it's never a good sign when you open the package and immediately get a whiff of nicotine. Gross.  :O

I bought this machine as it, like the 512Ke with the Mac Rescue upgrade, had a visible SCSI port installed in the battery compartment; inside, I discovered a Dove MacSnap 548S 2 MB RAM board, with the matching SCSI upgrade. The machine had also been upgraded with an 800K drive, presumably installed when the original ROMs were replaced.

When I power tested it, it displayed the normal flashing disk icon, but also whined quite loudly and did not have any sound. After an analog board recap and cleaning of the audio jack on the logic board, I was able to get it up and running well again.  :)

My next conquest post will be about yet another 512K, but with a very special and rare upgrade that, in my opinion, is cooler than any of the other stuff I've posted about in this thread..more to come soon!

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cj_reha

Member
Nice. Would you be interested in selling the Color Classic?
No, sorry - prices for Color Classics are insane these days, and I'd be afraid I wouldn't be able to find another reasonably-priced unit. I plan on hanging on to it for a while.  :smiley:

 

Purdy

New member
The Mac Rescue upgrade board uses the somewhat unreliable KillyKlip connector to interface with the Mac, and consequently, when I first got this unit, it only displayed a checkerboard pattern. However, a reseat of the upgrade board made it spring back to life, and it works flawlessly! The system is amazingly clean inside, and I didn't need to do any work at all to get it to work stably. Very glad I was able to find one of these interesting upgrades... its simplicity makes me think it might be possible to reverse-engineer at some point in the future. :cheesy:
Just wanted to pass along a sincere thank you for this post. I have a 512k with a Mac Rescue board that was displaying a checkboard pattern as well. Sure enough, gently pressing on the Mac Rescue board to reseat the KillyKlip did the trick and the 512k is back in business!
 
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