First 475 adventures!

[CJ_Miller]

It started out a bit difficult. First I wanted to test the box before installing the ][e card, and I needed to fiddle with cd600i jumpers to something it was happy with. It psyches me out that this is the only Mac I have seen which flashes a happy boot Mac for a second even if there is no boot volume. Then the screen blips to the familiar "?" drive. I kept thinking it was trying to boot off the cd...

As for floppies, I had shaky luck with those too. At first it would not format any blank ones. And it hung if I tried good ones. So I took the drive apart and found that the head spring had jumped out of its groove. Fixed. Wonder if it one of those "superdrives" that can read and write DD and HD disks.

Then I loaded the Apple Legacy CD and installed 7.5.3. It was weird because the install was all floppy images and I was really, really hoping I would not need to get the drive working well enough to copy those. Instead the "net install" script installed the OS with no problems. First I created a dual partition with 10 MB ProDOS and the other -2GB in HFS. Speaking of HFS, this thing won't read HFS+ CDs - I wonder if there is an extension which works with them in an update. Then I installed the ][e card and software, and it boots! I am going to seriously rack my brain trying to remember how to get around in ][ since it has been almost 30 years. Only inconvenience is switching between 24 and 32 bit addressing, but it is not too bad. 32-bit and caches on this thing feels spry, I like! And the full 040 will hopefully arrive soon.

Bedtime for now, but next step is to try to update it with latest CD and AppleShare. Otherwise I will collect my desired apps and burn onto straight HFS discs.

 

[Scott Baret]

You are correct, that Mac has a SuperDrive in it. Sorry to hear about the spring, it must have come out during shipping, but glad you got it fixed! A little trivia about that floppy drive--when I first got the 475 from surplus, someone had removed the floppy drive. I put a NOS drive in there eight years ago and it hasn't seen much use at all.

Glad to hear you're having fun with it! Can't wait to hear about the full 040 transplant!!!

 

[LCGuy]

HFS+ didn't show up until Mac OS 8.1 - you'll need to either install Mac OS 8.1 or burn your CDs in HFS (not HFS+) format.

 

[CJ_Miller]

You are correct, that Mac has a SuperDrive in it. Sorry to hear about the spring, it must have come out during shipping, but glad you got it fixed! A little trivia about that floppy drive--when I first got the 475 from surplus, someone had removed the floppy drive. I put a NOS drive in there eight years ago and it hasn't seen much use at all.

I was amazed at how clean it was! I was saying to myself that it was like a completely new drive. The drive was kind of floating when the LC arrived, so this bouncing is probably what caused the problem. Like many of the

plastic-tab era Macs it is adequate for daily use, but not gigging, shipping, nor the American Tourister gorilla. I am psyched that this is the first floppy drive I have successfully repaired. And good to know that it is a SuperDrive, this helps me use it for setting up my older systems.

Glad to hear you're having fun with it! Can't wait to hear about the full 040 transplant!!!

It is great fun! My 6-year old son finally got to see how "floppies" work. I will be trying various setups over the next couple of weeks. This is my first time configuring System 7! I started with MacOS 8.5, and started using 6.0.8 only this year. It is a learning experience and I am finally trying lots of 7 software I've had around.

Thank you so much Scott for making this possible!

 

[CJ_Miller]

HFS+ didn't show up until Mac OS 8.1 - you'll need to either install Mac OS 8.1 or burn your CDs in HFS (not HFS+) format.

Yes, I did more research into the morning and realized that. For whatever reason I assumed it was from the 7.5-7.6 time. I guess a new filesystem warrants a major OS version. HFS it is!

 

[CJ_Miller]

My full 040 finally arrived after a long delay in transit, works great! For regular use I will probably try to implement some sort of cooling for it. I have been busy cabling my room into some sort of network, so this is the first I have touched the 475 in a few weeks. Setup will resume shortly!

 

[CJ_Miller]

I had been having some trouble getting the board to start lately, it would chime, spin the drive, and then - nothing. This I guessed to be caused by PRAM weirdness and if I leave it plugged in for a few minutes and quickly toggle the power, it boots fine.

The full 040 install was quite easy. It does run very hot though. It would probably survive without cooling, but I am going to install some. I will poke around for any big low-profile heatsinks which might be suitable. Last night I spent some time installing things and goofing around. At least I can even get to it, since I have tackled some of the computer clutter.

 

[Byrd]

Power issues in LC475s are almost always due to a low voltage/dead PRAM battery; replacing it should fix up your issues. Regarding the "full" 040, it doesn't get that hot but small heatsink on top is useful, especially if you overclock it to 33Mhz (a must, it's an easy thing to do!).

JB