Fixing a Color Classic

[gubbish]

Hi,

It's been a while since I visited here, but it's good to be back. A recent rescue:

I just saved a Color Classic from someone who was about to bring it to the recyclers, and would like to nurse it back from its current non-functional state.

I do have another CC which is working, so I could potentially do some testing there if needed.

So far, I did the following -

- removed the logic board, and tried to power up without it. The fan comes on, so I'm thinking this means the analog board/power supply are at least partially good.

- removed PRAM battery, replaced logic board, tried to boot again. No response at all when the power key on the keyboard is pressed.

- tried leaving it plugged in for a few hours and then tried to boot. Still nothing.

And I am using a known good ADB keyboard.

I also noticed that this CC has an ethernet card in it, which is nice.

Any ideas about where to start looking?

Also I remember reading somewhere here that you can upgrade a CC with an LC 575 board. I have an LC 475, I'm guessing you can't use this logic board in the CC?

Thanks for the help in advance!

 

[zuiko21]

Welcome back!

It seems that some CCs have a CUDA reset switch. Mine doesn't, but if yours has one, it's worth trying to press it for 20 sec, just in case. You may need a working battery for that trick to work. Read more details here and here.

Checking the area around the electrolythic capacitors or, even better, cleaning those areas with Isopropyl alcohol might help.

On the other hand, despite the 475 board bearing the same functionality of the 575, their form factors are quite different -- classic connectors here and there on the 475, big edge connector on the 575 (just like the CC)

 

[beachycove]

It is sometimes useful — for reasons hitherto unexplained — to leave a CC plugged in, and with the rear power switch turned on, for 24 hrs or so and then try to boot it. It somehow "wakes up," sometimes.

It is, of course, also possible that the machine is toast, or that the capacitors have failed (not getting anywhere being a typical symptom), but I would try the first alternative first. It used to be a standard piece of advice around here.

 

[gubbish]

Thanks very much for the tips,

I'm happy to report success!

While the color classic would not boot with no PRAM battery at all, when I swapped in a good battery that I had in the aforementioned LC 475, it worked!

I'm glad this turned out to be a simple fix.

This Mac looks like it was in an elementary school, and has something called "At Ease" installed - basically it locks down everything unless you have the "Teacher" password. Looks like it's time for an OS reinstall. What's a good version to run on a color classic?

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Mine runs 7.1, but you need the Enabler (I think 065) for that.

I later installed a Mystic board in mine, mostly because the caps are apparently shot on the old one. Now to find a full '040 for it ...

 

[Bunsen]

Personally, I would try for 7.6.1 on that, if you have 32MB or so of RAM.

 

[phreakout]

gubbish,

A simpler solution to resetting that At Ease password is to first boot off of a Disk Tools floppy of any supported version of System 7 for the Color Classic, go into the System Folder on the hard drive, open the Preferences Folder and send the At Ease Preferences file to the trash bin; then empty the Trash and restart your CC. Now even At Ease can't remember what the password is, either!

But if you've already done an erase of the hard drive, then the above procedure would be pointless now would it? : )

73s de Phreakout. :rambo:

 

[techknight]

there is a proceedure that would kill at ease and load the finder instead, which i used to do that in my school all the time years ago, it would piss the teachers off. alot... Because i would do it just for fun. Then I hacked the old fortres 101 for Win95 and got suspended eventually. LOL, then i quit doin that.

But ill be damned if i remember how to do it. I know you had to use the programmer interrupt.

 

[Bunsen]

What about starting up with extensions disabled? Hold down shift till the loading bar appears.

 

[phreakout]

Bunsen,

That won't work, since At Ease writes itself onto Track #0 of the hard drive. My steps are the only non-destructive way to get around the problem.

73s de Phreakout. :rambo:

 

[gubbish]

Thanks for the info,

In the end I opted for the total destruction option, and just reformatted and installed System 7.1. There were no real incidents of note during this process, other than the fact that after 7.1 had fully installed and rebooted, that when booting from the HD, the same dialog of "7.1 is not supported on this model" came up.. and I rebooted from the Disk tools disk, and copied Enabler 401 onto the system folder of the HD. That did the trick and now it's booting into 7.1 nicely.

Next step is to get the ethernet working - I installed the asante drivers for the card. Amazing that they have so many legacy drivers still on their website! Also installed open transport 1.1.2. Now to find some internet tools such as ping,telnet, etc for system 7.1. Any pointers on that?

Thanks..

 

[theos911]

Fetch for FTP.

Some flavor of Netscape for internet.

 

[mcdermd]

WhatRoute 1.4.3 for ping, traceroute, host lookups

 

[gubbish]

Thanks..

The CC is now outfitted with Fetch, WhatRoute, and MacWeb for (very basic) web browsing. And I can pull software from my modern Mac with FTP. Joyous day.

Thanks very much for the help.

 

[theos911]

In Fetch, go to preferences and be sure to set your buffer size to the appropriate amount for your speed. Otherwise it will be slower than potential, or choke up.