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 ) 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.
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 ) 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.