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Color Classic and MacTV have a baby!

defor

You can make up something and come back to it late
Staff member
I've NEVER seen a MacTV mod, so I figured to be the first, using a parts machine that could only be revived by cheating and using parts from a 520...




I finished the electrical and functional case mods tonight with the aid of some pizza and 'dew.

Going to dye the plastic black, transfer the serial number from the MacTV, silkscreen a new case badge, and create a new back panel to cover the AV ports.

done so far:

- routing the microphone hole into a circle just like the MacTV has to fit the IR bubble

- proper 60Hz Analog Board mod

- removal of one backpanel screw post and trimming of the SCSI cable guides

- replacement of microphone board with iR board

 

defor

You can make up something and come back to it late
Staff member
It's the lens/light pipe for the IR sensor board.




It turns out that while the Color Classic, 520 and MacTV are very different in board design, they share a few similarities. In particular, where the microphone board is on the CC/5XX, the MacTV has an IR board the exact same shape and size. instead of the rubber spacer to hold the microphone board in the case, the MacTV has a light pipe from this dome leading from the outside of the case. In fact, other than the fact that the 520 bezel has a rectangular hole, and the MacTV has a circular hole for the Light pipe, the bezel molding is identical. The analog board is as well, and on both the CC and 5xx analog boards, the Microphone board only uses 3 of the 4 lines going to it. The MacTV replaces the microphone board with IR, and uses all 4 wires, and thus, due to the fact that the AB in a MacTV actually says LC520, the Color classic board is jsut as well suited.

I may add stereo to the ClassicTV to bring it fully up to spec with the MacTV, but i'm still unsure.

 

LCGuy

LC Doctor/Hot Rodder
Nice. Just whatever you do, don't chuck out the remaining MacTV parts!!! They may be damaged but a MacTV is still a MacTV.

 

defor

You can make up something and come back to it late
Staff member
Well, now that i've had 2 to analyze, i've come to the conclusion that a mactv is actually not a mactv, but rather, a mactv is a lc520 with only 6 custom parts unavailable anywhere else-

logic board with onboard composite video and audio in, and no pds or fpu option and a custom socket for tv tuner used on no other mac

the custom tuner

a new back panel

ir board

ir lightpipe

retaining clip for lightpipe

EVERYTHING and i mean EVERYYTHING else is stock lc520 parts, just in a black case. Part numbers and board etchings are even the same.

This in and of itself, however creates the dilemma.

While i have one almost mint Mactv, this one willl never be complete due to the broken plastics. So, while the daamaged and unusable parts are the front bezel. This means that the only 2 parts i'm not using in the mod that actually are unique are the back case and panel. In truth kinda pointless... I'll keep them unless someone with a better offer comes along.

are you interested?

 
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