• 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.

Daniël's Conquests

Daniël

Well-known member
I got two Macintosh LCs in today, with the plan of making at least one relatively nice and working unit out of it. I've made a video about it:





 

Daniël

Well-known member
@Daniël Oosterhuis  If you get a 2.5" SCSI drive (SCSI2SD for example), you can nestle it behind a second floppy drive.  I did that with my LC, so I have a floppy + MO drive + hard drive.
You've gotten me to look at MO drives now, I think I have another hardware fascination now that'll drain some of my money  :lol:

 

olePigeon

Well-known member
MOs are my favorite 80/90s tech.  They aren't auto-inject, so for the one in my LC I have to jam my finger in there to insert a disk.  Ejects fine, though.  Had to also put in a bunch of spacers to get the height just right.  In the end, though, I think it's worth it. :)

I've been using 90 mm (3.5") drives, but I've also been eyeing some of the larger 130 mm (5.25") drives just for their ridiculousness.  Also, the larger ones obviously hold a lot more space.  Plus, the media seems to be cheaper than the smaller ones for some reason.  Probably due to there being a LOT more 130 mm discs manufactured since the technology's inception.

They're a bit pokey and slower than other optical or hard media, but exceptionally reliable.  Great for backup storage, which is what I use them for.  Plus, most the disks are transparent so you can see the platters inside. :cool:

 

Daniël

Well-known member
Some more Apple goodness has found its way to me. A few days ago, a Mac ED 512Ke popped up very locally, just a few towns away, in the same municipality as me. Decided to pitch a bid, and the €40 I bid was accepted. Picked it up yesterday, the seller showed it booting to the question mark disk (it wasn't mentioned in the advertisement if it was working, nor were there any pictures of it powered on, so this was a bonus). It had a few scuffs, but I decided to take it regardless. It was an alright price, and I wanted a machine older than the other ED I had, that at some point received a Plus logic board and back case swap. Also, that "Plus ED" has the same analog board, so having a working example as a reference will be handy when I get back to troubleshooting the Plus. 

Back home with the machine, and it had stopped booting, now Sad Mac'ing during the RAM test. Taking it apart revealed what I had expected, a Dove MacSnap RAM expansion. I figured something like that could have been vibrated just enough by the short car trip to no longer make good contact, as having a RAM or related IC fail after buying it would have been extraordinary bad luck. It worked without the card, and then worked just fine with it again after I gave it a quick dusty bunny removal. The MacSnap is the 524 Version 5 variant, which adds an additional 512K to the system. It looks like getting the chips needed to make this a MacSnap 548 (which adds 1.5MB to the system, which makes it 2MB total) aren't difficult or too pricey to get, I just need to see if those clip-on sockets are still readily available, as the 548 has two more than the 524.

I've taken out the battery compartment for the moment to bathe it in vinegar, as there was a leaky battery left behind. I also removed the two RIFA caps, just so they won't explode and smoke everywhere. I will replace those down the road, even though I think our power doesn't need much filtering. I did get to check the Amiga mouse adapter I built, which works just fine. I had intended to build a PS/2 keyboard adapter as well, but the cheapo Arduino clones I bought off AliExpress earlier this year never arrived, and I had forgotten about that.

More pics here: https://imgur.com/a/FMmakjK



I also received this eMate 300, which was sold as untested, without stylus or charger. A quick test with a 7.5V Sony PSOne adapter confirmed it worked, but it quickly grew angry with me as apparently the eMate can't deal with adapters supplying more than 1.2A. The PSOne adapter was a 2A, so it would constantly throw up error messages about it not being able to charge the batteries with said adapter. Guess I will have to find or banjax together a suitable adapter. I also plan to rebuild the battery pack, I already found an online store selling tabbed Eneloops which will be perfectly suited for this job.

IMG_20200806_144325686.jpg

 
Last edited by a moderator:

ravuya

Active member
Current is drawn by the eMate, so a 2A adapter should be just fine as the eMate isn't expected to draw more than 1.2A. The error is probably coming from some battery management system noticing that it's putting juice into the battery but the battery isn't recharging. :)

 

Daniël

Well-known member
Current is drawn by the eMate, so a 2A adapter should be just fine as the eMate isn't expected to draw more than 1.2A. The error is probably coming from some battery management system noticing that it's putting juice into the battery but the battery isn't recharging. :)
You'd think that, but the eMate specifically has "1.2A MAX" written on the power specs on the bottom of the laptop. 

 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
The error is probably coming from some battery management system noticing that it's putting juice into the battery but the battery isn't recharging


You'd think that, but the eMate specifically has "1.2A MAX" written on the power specs on the bottom of the laptop. 


FWIW, I just managed to reproduce this error with the stock adapter and a dead battery (I thought I'd seen it before! I normally run my eMate batteryless).  So I'd look at the battery first.

 

Daniël

Well-known member
FWIW, I just managed to reproduce this error with the stock adapter and a dead battery (I thought I'd seen it before! I normally run my eMate batteryless).  So I'd look at the battery first.
From reading the Wikipedia page about NiMH cells, and their charging methods, I think there is a good reason for the maximum amperage rating. The eMate battery pack has a thermistor, that monitors the temperature while charging. As soon as the cells get full, the incoming charge is turned into heat, which signals the charging circuit to stop. I think with a higher amp adapter, it will notice much quicker heat build up, and perhaps it also notices the input power doesn't drop as much as the 1.2A charger would.

In the case of tired cells not taking a charge, this will just cause a quick heat buildup with low input voltage drop, even with the appropriate adapter, which causes the Newton to think a higher amp adapter is attached.

 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
That would suggest to me that the charging circuit isn't doing its job, if that is the case; regulating the current to maximise charge on the battery without thermally overloading it is... quite a lot of its job.

 

CC_333

Well-known member
That would suggest to me that the charging circuit isn't doing its job, if that is the case; regulating the current to maximise charge on the battery without thermally overloading it is... quite a lot of its job.
Indeed.  That would seem to be a very poor design on Apple's part if that is the case.

c

 

Daniël

Well-known member
A Mac I've had shipped out a while ago finally arrived today. It's an untested Color Classic I bought from Japan. Now, usually getting something from afar is pretty dang expensive, but in this case, I've spared quite a bit of cash over getting one in Europe. The Mac itself cost me €50, and thanks to a special offer they were running, the shipping was free, although I did have to pick the cheapest option. I had it shipped out in early June, and it was dropped off at the post office last Saturday. With the protective packaging fee, and the customs tax and fees on top, this Mac came out at right around €98. That's way cheaper than what they go for in Europe, even untested or broken ones, so it was well worth it. Even if the shipping costs weren't covered, it'd have been a better deal.  It's a bit yellow and dirty, but the protective packaging did its job getting it through seamail:

DSC01963.JPGDSC01964.JPG

Anyways, I first disassembled it to inspect it. Because, right after I bought it, I noticed in the pictures that the power switch was totally gone, which was a bit concerning. Thankfully, an inspection showed that the previous owner had bodge wired the neutral and live wires from the plug to the analog board together using small wires with spade connectors, as the original power switch probably broke at some point. The machine has soft power on anyways, so this would have worked, even if it's a bit questionable. I have taken out the power switch of the dead TDK LC PSU I have, which fits perfectly as a replacement for the missing switch here. 

DSC01965.JPGDSC01966.JPG

Logic board inspection time, and this was a bit nerve wracking. I had eyed a CCII on Mercari as well, which was a bit less yellowed and was around the same price, but there was battery gunk on the back I/O ports, so I knew that one was likely a goner, or a LOT of work. This one looked clean, but no pictures of the board were included, thus it was a bit of a gamble. Well, it's a gamble I won, but just in the nick of time! That Maxell is just about to go!

DSC01959.JPGDSC01969.JPG

With everything checked out, the power switch sorted and the Maxell pulled, it was time to try it out. I did this outside, just in case we got magic smoke. The Color Classic is a switchless multivoltage machine, so plugging it into 230V wasn't going to do any harm by itself. Initially, it gave a green light and made fan and hard drive noises, but wouldn't go any further than that. After power cycling, nothing for a while. Then, I let it sit for a while and tried one more time, and it decided to wake up and chime! It still boots into the heavily bloated Mac OS 7.5.5 install that was on the disk. The screen looks dim here, but this is outside where it has to compete with the sun, and the sun clearly is winning. I tried it again inside where it powered up on the first go, and the screen is still beautifully bright.

DSC01974.JPG

I'm really happy it all worked out so well. It just needs a recap for both the board and the analog board, and I might do the 640x480 mod, in the way that it will work with both the original and the Mystic boards. A Mystic of some kind is a longer term goal, although I'd be plenty happy with a non-crippled '030 board too. I have plenty of '040 machines now, so this doesn't need to be one.

 

olePigeon

Well-known member
Phew!  Got that Maxell bomb out in just the nick of time!  That thing was going super critical.  I see you cut BOTH wires to defuse that bomb. :lol:

 

Daniël

Well-known member
Got another Mac for the collection today, a Performa 600CD. It's essentially a middle road between the IIvx and IIvi. It has the 32MHz 030 on a 16MHz bus of the IIvx, but the lack of 32k L2 cache of the IIvi. 

DSC02002.jpg

I got it locally from the same seller as the PM6100, for €30. He's into old computers, but not Macs, and he sometimes just gets them in lots of various computers, so he just sells them as untested, for parts. 

From the ad, I did notice the door of the CD-ROM Drive, which is a caddy loader, was down, yet no caddy was inserted. The flap has gone floppy, so that needs some inspection. The drive is taken out in the pictures, hence the gaping hole where it should be.

DSC02003.jpg

The Mac itself wouldn't power up, so I took off the lid. Looking inside the machine, the caps had clearly leaked, as the board had wet spots around the area of the caps. That's at least somewhat positive, as it being fairly fresh means it has had less time to do damage. The traces and IC leads all looked clean underneath, so that's reassuring. The machine had no hard drive or RAM, so I just populated it with four 8MB SIMMs. I also cleaned off the electrolyte, ensuring the EGRET chip was especially thoroughly cleaned. The battery was a Kodak Photolife from 2011, clearly someone has been playing with this machine somewhere in the last decade. 

But the big surprise was in the PDS slot, there was some sort of 040 card! On close inspection, it appears identical to a Sonnet Presto, and judging by the oscillator, it's a 40MHz model. The heatsink is firmly glued on, but if Wikipedia is to believed, 40MHz 68LC040s didn't exist until 2000, meaning it should have the full 040 on it. The weird thing is that the "Sonnet Technologies" branding on the back is instead "Donoho Design Group". Looking them up, they're an iPhone and iPad consultancy nowadays, but their About page does mention their work on "TokaMac" accelerators. I wonder, did they simply rebrand Sonnet cards, or did Sonnet rebrand their cards for the Prestos? 

IMG_20200913_142636733.jpg

After letting it dry, I gave it another shot, and there you have it, it's booting to a floppy! There was no sound, but I then noticed it had no speaker either, so that will have to be replaced. I did get sound out of headphones, so the DFAC audio IC on this one is thankfully still working. 

DSC02004.JPG

For now, I've put in the ProDrive 425i from my dead Quadra 700, by just screwing it to the frame of the computer itself, as it's missing the hard drive frame. It sits kind of crooked, but is firmly in place. It still needs a good cleaning, inside and out, a recap, some RAM, a HDD solution like a SCSI2SD, a speaker, and work on the CD Drive as well as a caddy, but this will be a nice piece for the collection... and yet another project ;)

 

ravuya

Active member
If you need another, the original LC PSU power switch is an Arcolectric 8550V family. I replaced mine with a T8550VBAAA from Digikey for $2.

 
Top