Does anyone run a Takky Color Classic - 3.3V regulator essential?

[Byrd]

Hi,

A couple of years ago I was given a Colour Classic "Takky", with a 6500 motherboard, L2 G3 400Mhz, 128MB RAM and CSII ethernet.  It was stored away safely, I knew it wasn't booting reliably and assumed it was due to the modification.  It looked like it had a fair deal of use in the day.

The other day I stripped it down and found what appears to be an impressively neat hack job with strengthened plastic chassis, good cable routing, additional cooling and it boots to a flashing question mark and a screeching hard disk (obviously dead - a Fujitsu 6.4GB 3.5" drive).  It left it like this for an hour or so with no quirks.

Further investigation reveals no 3.3V regulator in place, which according to the LowEndMac Color Classic mod guide, may or may not be essential.  Especially not for a 6500 board, but would probably be needed if the CC was upgraded further like this one with G3, full RAM.  I'm planning on replacing the dead HD with a 2.5" 80GB hard disk which has < 0.4A rating.  Thought about a CF card (too slow for G3) and mSata SSD (it didn't work on other Macs tested), so mechanical HD it is.

Has anyone else a similar Takky, have you encountered any issues with power or regulation when upgraded?

Thanks

JB

 

[jsarchibald]

Sort of off-topic, but I use a CF card in my TAM with a 400MHz Sonnet card in it, and access and write times are pretty speedy.  A good, cheap way to have bulk storage, and easy to add software from a modern system as well.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

.  .  .  no 3.3V regulator in place, which according to the LowEndMac Color Classic mod guide, may or may not be essential.  Especially not for a 6500 board, but would probably be needed if the CC was upgraded further like this one with G3, full RAM.

3.3V hasn't got anything to do with those upgrades, it's for the PCI bus. The 6500 board rolls its own 3.3V and enough of it to power TWO PCI slots at that.

No worries, mate!

 

[Byrd]

Ah that's good to know, cobber!  

So looks like I'll be right, I'll do a quick double check of wiring, slide in the new HD and hopefully have this beast up and running!  It looks like it was a real work horse in the day, it would have packed a punch sitting on the desktop!

JB

 

[Byrd]

Sort of off-topic, but I use a CF card in my TAM with a 400MHz Sonnet card in it, and access and write times are pretty speedy.  A good, cheap way to have bulk storage, and easy to add software from a modern system as well.

I've been experimenting with CF cards of late and I suppose I'm too tight/not convinced a fast CF card will be good enough.  I've a stack of 2.5" IDE HDs which I keep tucking into.  What speed rating cards have you used in your TAM?

The Takky has also helped up upgrade my TAM, it had the 1MB cache G3 400 card in it, which I switched over from the TAM's 512K cache same card.  Might be good for a few nothingmegapercents of speed.

 

[jsarchibald]

I bought an inexpensive adapter (like 71 cents), and a Kingston 32GB card.  Think it's a 266X card.  That, paired with the Sonnet, makes this a very quick and easy to use computer.  I have the card partitioned multiple ways, running 7.6.1, 8.1, 8.6, and 9.1, as well as a couple of drives in different formats for storage.  If I had to keep only one system, it would be the TAM by a country mile.  It has USB, CD, great sound, can connect external drives, even has the floppy, so it's a great all-rounder for me.

I know many people would disagree, but it's tops for me!

 

[defor]

In response to the original topic, as stated, the 3.3v is for the PCI bus. That said, the earlier 6360 and 6400 era boards should need it if you need to drive a pci device, while the 6500 boards may not.

The boards SHOULD work fine regardless without 3.3v, you just won't be able to run any PCI devices.

In the past, I've mounted a regulator and heatsink soldered directly to the bottom power pins on the logic board to overcome this, it's not pretty, but if you're careful, it should work fine.

 

[Byrd]

So far, so good - I 3D printed a 2.5" to 3.5" bracket and mounted the 2.5" 80GB drive in there. Put it all back together and was able to install OS 9.1 onto the machine without any quirks. I then put a basic 2-port USB 1.1 card into the PCI slot (using the single Apple riser card) and it boots fine, tomorrow I'll install the USB and G3 drivers.

It has a loud, potent 60mm fan which exhausts out a lot of air. I'm guessing that's pretty essential.

One big surprise was the floppy drive looked a bit odd ... it's a Zip100 internal SCSI drive! A snug fit for the media, but just has enough power to eject the Zip disk out. Hats off to whomever modded this CC. I'll post up pics soon of the internals and functioning Mac.