• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

Couldn't help myself...

Brett B.

Well-known member
I picked up a Plus tonight, complete system actually, keyboard, mouse, cables, and an ImageWriter II. It was posted on a Facebook group for $60 (untested) but nobody wanted it and I ended up getting it for free to keep it out of the trash. The guy was cleaning out a house he bought and found it stashed away. The dang thing even works! I'm mostly excited about the printer, I've wanted one for years after passing up a million of them back in the day. Cleanup time and a new ribbon will hopefully have it working like new! Scores like this remind me of the good old days.

 

joethezombie

Well-known member
Ah very nice!  Getting goods FOR FREE is the best!  When you get that ImageWriter II working, might I recommend some banners using The Print Shop!  Somethings just need tractor-feed!

 

unity

Well-known member
Sweet! I picked up new black ribbons a while back. I use my imagewriter more than I probably should!

 

Brett B.

Well-known member
I ordered a ribbon today and I've been saving a half case of tractor feed paper for about 10 years, just in case I ever got one!

 

Juror22

Well-known member
That is great and it IS just like the good old days, when the pickin' was easy and everything came with a computer.  Congratulations on this, it is outstanding that its working.  I think that's great that you still have some of the old tractor-feed paper lying around.

 

Torbar

Well-known member
check out on the trading post there's a topic where someone is selling new colored ribbons that were just manufactured

 

techknight

Well-known member
I dont know if he has more ribbons in stock quite yet. 

However, YES on The Print Shop! Those were the fun days. 

 

Torbar

Well-known member
yeah now that i look at that post it looks like he ordered another set, but doesn't look like he has them quite yet

 

Brett B.

Well-known member
What's the shelf life on ribbons?  I don't mind keeping a black one around, hate to waste a color one if they dry up quick though.  

 

joethezombie

Well-known member
I don't think they dry out. But there is a foam roller inside that self destructs and jams the ribbon from advancing. I'd guess it takes more than a decade for that to happen, but I don't really know.

 

unity

Well-known member
^ Thats true. I had some very old ribbons that worked. But then they jammed. The roller was a redish rubber and broke up killing it. Thats when I bought new ones from the local office supply store. Luckily the ribbons used are very common.

 

Brett B.

Well-known member
I cleaned all the dirt off and blew a ton of paper scraps and dust out of the ImageBanger and hooked it up to my G3.  It lives!  And shockingly, the ribbon is not completely dried up, I was able to print text but it was pretty faint.  There was a few pieces of tractor feed label paper in it and they had the name and address of a local bar on them... I was hoping I'd be able to roughly date when it was last used but the bar is still open.  Probably been a while, in any case.  The sound of this thing is music to my ears, not quite like an Epson LQ-570+, but close enough  :D

 
Last edited by a moderator:

Brett B.

Well-known member
My black ribbon should arrive in the mail tonight.  Never been more excited to print some stuff in my life.  :lol:

The Plus got cleaned up, 4MB memory upgrade and swapped in a spare floppy drive that I lubed a couple years ago.  Haven't touched the keyboard and mouse yet, they are absolutely gross, but no dead keys on the keyboard.  I also ordered a 44MB SyQuest cartridge - might as well make use of the ZFP SyQuest drive I've had on the shelf for years.

 

Brett B.

Well-known member
I got my SyQuest cartridge tonight and spent most of the night formatting, reformatting, and swapping floppy disks and disk images until I found four good disks that would image properly and load 6.0.8.  Other than being insanely loud, the Plus is now booting off the cartridge!  It came preloaded with a LaCie driver that did not work so well - it seemed to freeze right at startup quite often and wouldn't reliably mount when booting from a floppy... reformatting with this "CMS Utility" program I came across fixed ALL of it.

The ImageWriter has been interesting.  It prints but there some of the pins in the print head are clearly stuck.  Rubbing alcohol and q-tips cleaned a ton of dried up dirt and ink out of it, and I have the pins soaking in a drop of WD-40 overnight.  I printed a few test pages over the course of the night and everything I have done is an improvement so I am feeling pretty confident that once things get loosened up it'll work great.

Very pleased with my progress to say the least.

 

Brett B.

Well-known member
Did it again, I picked up a G5 last night for $10.  Dual 2GHz air cooled with Radeon 9600.  Seems to work great other than not recognizing one bank of memory at all.  Haven't decided if I should Hackintosh the thing, fix it, or what.  Never have found a G5 that actually works correctly, worst case I have $10 of scrap aluminum now.  :lol:

 

Brett B.

Well-known member
I brought home another Bondi iMac yesterday.  I normally wouldn't have bothered... and I almost still didn't, but this one was my grandpa's and it is as close to mint condition as it gets.  I am sure it has been used less than 10 hours total and was under a cover in the guest bedroom all these years.  It was more or less an impulse buy that he made back in 1997.  Only upgrade it ever got was Mac OS 8.5.  Crazy!  I need to set up another desk in the basement, I'm starting to get a stack built up and nowhere to put stuff.

 

LazarusNine

Well-known member
I need to set up another desk in the basement, I'm starting to get a stack built up and nowhere to put stuff.
Story of my life. ???? Great work on saving the iMac, though. That said, when you said it was your grandpa's, I suddenly felt really old!! We owned the 333MHz blueberry model, but the original Bondi Blue iMac is very cool indeed.

 

EvieSigma

Young ThinkPad Apprentice
I have a Bondi iMac myself, with original keyboard and puck mouse running the iMac specific version of 8.1.

It's due for a new(er) hard drive, I reckon...it still has its original 4GB drive which I imagine is mighty tired at this point.

 

Brett B.

Well-known member
He bought it right after my parents bought theirs because he thought it was cool and rarely used it.  I have my parents old iMac too but it has definitely been used, abused, and upgraded.  The screen is a little fuzzy now and the plastics are discolored.  

I don't know what I'm going to do with the new one - maybe set it up next to the other or something, I am pretty sure I have a 333MHz CPU and 256MB memory for it somewhere.  I'd really love to find a mezzanine slot CPU upgrade and build a really nice "sleeper" but the chances of running across one of those is not good.

I got the original boxes and all the accessories with it too but missing the styrofoam inserts that would have gone around the computer.  Really on the fence about keeping the box, if it was complete I would but it's kinda just another box now.

 
Top