Considering a Mac II...

[LC_575]

I'll see. I'd rather he take that instead of the Apple II, or perhaps I could sacrifice the IIx instead.

I have not told you all that I happen to have two manuals and a set of application disks for the PCjr, which I found right next to my 575 when I discovered it at the curb a few blocks from my house. I see what you're saying, Gorgonops, and you make a good point.

I'll ask him.

 

[Bunsen]

What parts is your friend after?

 

[LC_575]

I have some great news. I have successfully liberated the first of several Macintoshes.

I decided to take home one of the IIsi's and it's matching Apple Extended Keyboard II. My method for transport from school to home: backpack.

Yes. I carried the IIsi and keyboard like they were textbooks. I placed my actual books in a separate bag and made the 1.5 hour long trip via bus to home. It wasn't fun, the IIsi is no PowerBook.

I tested the IIsi without a monitor (my DB-15 converter hasn't arrived yet) it's outlook is good, getting progressively better after each boot:

Boot 1: Mac II chord followed by the Chimes of Death a few moments later. What do you expect for a computer that hasn't awoken in at least 10 years?

Boot 2: Mac II chord followed by hard drive noise and no death chime. I left it on for about a minute - the hard drive didn't sound like it was loading anything and at one point shut off and then turned back on.

Boot 3: I inserted a boot floppy at this point, but the Mac insisted on an HD boot, producing the same results as Boot 2.

Boot 4: This time it read the floppy (Gamba's SuperBooter) and apparently loaded from it. Eventually I heard an error beep - probably the system-not-shut-down-properly message.

I think it's safe to say that at the very least the motherboard is healthy, although the HD may be dead. I inspected the motherboard - there's nothing very obviously wrong with it, all the caps look fine. Even the .5AA battery hasn't leaked. This IIsi has what I think is a custom PDS riser card installed - at first I thought it was the NuBus converter but it has, connected via ribbon cable, an RJ45 port and some other unfamiliar ports that are placed on the back where the NuBus card's face would be. Yes this card, whatever it is, still has a NuBus or PDS slot on it. Interesting.

 

[Osgeld]

I can assure your friend that nothing will be of use no matter what you give him ...

apple // = LS-TTL chips requires a bunch more current than what is out there, and modern HC stuff wont drive it (though cmos can be driven by ttl), and all chips combined your looking at about 15 bucks in parts outside of the LSI parts

pc-jr, same

anything newer, smd and LSI, so if he really wants to desolder a 140pin qfp marked 1988 apple with zilch on what it does or how to even connect it ...

aside from that, pennies worth of resistors and diodes with unuseable short leads, bunch of 20+ year old caps that are probally mostly rotten and maybe a fist full of 1 foot wire segments and some old motors

they would be much better off by buying some surprise boxes from electronic goldmine if they are serious about doing something other than ripping apart old boards (and there are plenty of vcr's and alarm clocks down at the thrift store)

 

[Bunsen]

Truly, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In this case, literally.

 

[LC_575]

All right, i'll stop him from taking anything.

 

[Gorgonops]

Practically every electronics dealer in the world sells "Value Packs". They're cheap. Super cheap. *incredibly* cheap. There's no TTL listed on this page, but a pack of anywhere between a hundred and five hundred TTL or CMOS 74-series ICs is usually between $10 and $30.

If your friend is looking for things like power supplies or electromechanical parts he can likewise do far better than an old computer. I've seen small stepper motors for around a quarter each, for instance. Again, totally not worth it to rip up an "antique".