JRL's Conquests

[JRL]

Made a major purchase that I wanted ever since I first heard about the 550c from the Cult of Mac book years ago -

I picked up a Powerbook 550c with the box and manuals for a grayscale 520 for $350 shipped from Japan.

It had some minor cosmetic damage to the screen from a leaking PRAM battery ("vinegar syndrome"), unfortunately, but otherwise is in pretty great shape! Already upgraded it to 40MB of RAM and the original 750 MB HD works great.

 

[JRL]

 

[cheesestraws]

Very nice!

 

[CC_333]

You make me jealous   (well, I do have a NuPowr 167 Mhz PPC upgrade for my 540c [] *note to self: ask @Bolle about its current status* )

Seriously though, good find!  These aren't getting any easier to find!

c

 

[JRL]

Big news...

Picked up a PowerBook 100 system from CL a week or so ago, recapped everything and fixed the HD as usual and it works great. 

It turns out that the guy who sold me the PB worked for component engineering for Apple for a while on quite a few projects, including the Newton 1xx series. He sold me the rest of his Newton stuff, including his prototypes.

https://imgur.com/a/uCop4OI

There were 9 Newtons in total that all were apparently used in the dev process but these are the most notable ones. The clear Newton has a normal front as he swapped the front out (his preference)

 

[aeberbach]

Memories... I was a Newton developer at an Apple-owned company in Brisbane, ceMis. Coincidentally I just picked up a 7200/90, which is one of the machines I used cfront to write driver software for them too.

 

[LaPorta]

I can't even imagine how awesome it was to get all of that!

 

[JRL]

Messed with the Newtons further, the two DVT units in the first picture of them have an unreleased Newton OS (1.4). Took some more pictures of some of the units here:

https://imgur.com/a/pOexZO2

https://imgur.com/a/D7izgqu

Also took a look at the schematics I got - some ADB related schematics (including the schematics for the Apple Keyboard and Keyboard II) and schematics for the 256/512k VRAM SIMMS, among others. I'll upload them hopefully soon.

 

[JRL]

Been going pretty crazy with YAJ/Buyee purchases lately, whoops. Some of the cooler things I've gotten (paid a lot for the DiiMO upgrade but I had wanted one for years)



The Interware upgrade is sealed inside.



Also bought a nice looking Nextstation Mono from @archer174 (along with an SE in an SE case and 12" RGB), it was great meeting you!

Also visited the Apple engineer who I got the Newton stuff/PB 100, bought a nice looking PB G3 Lombard and another LC. The LC is standard but it had a Dynacomp power supply with an orange "Not approved by the FCC label" (the story behind that was that component engineering at Apple would get a lot of prototype/engineering sample Mac power supplies/analog boards/crts/etc. and people in the group were allowed to take the unneeded parts if they needed to repair their personal Macs). 



I recapped the LC board (the prototype PSU is dead and needs a recap) and it's been working great. The other neat thing is that it has some 4mb simms he built out of repurposed 256kb simms.



Besides the computers, I also picked up some other small parts, including copies of various Apple schematics.

Finally, I picked up about 12 50pin scsi drives off of a local CL seller as well. Always good to have some spare drives!

 

[JRL]

Some more photos of the Newtons I got earlier, still messing with them!

 

[KnobsNSwitches]

Love the Newton stuff. If you're up for it, I'm sure the other Newton users on the newtontalk mailing list would love to hear more about OS 1.4!

 

[JRL]

So I visited a local ewaste plant recommended to me by @olePigeon - thank you again! Unfortunately a lot of their vintage Apple stuff had Maxell bombs or was water damaged, but there's a lot of salvageable stuff.

For $350 I picked up:

3 IIcis

SE FDHD

Amdek composite monitor

Duo Disk

2 early Disk II drives with rainbow cord

Duo Dock with a really rough looking Duo 230 stuck inside

PB 520 with PCMCIA revA card cage

17" vintage Sony Trinitron CRT

Examining the 520 - I thought it was normal (nothing crazy with it on the outside), but I turned it over when I got home and saw:

https://imgur.com/a/QniovG6

The LCD is unfortunately dying but the HD is still there and I can barely read the contents - it does have some info from the old owner (Apple employee). Very happy to add this to my collection to say the least =)

 

[jonpurdy]

That is wild! Were you able to verify if the prototype Blackbird have a 68040 CPU?

Looks like the screen is the usual 640x480 panel from the rest of the 500-series; is it the same grayscale screen as the 520?

 

[CC_333]

I think I have an extra 520c LCD somewhere, if you want to upgrade it to color?

Also bear in mind that many of these older LCDs need to be recapped too, and doing that might bring it back to life (unless there's lines and stuff, which would indicate other trouble).

c

 

[JRL]

That is wild! Were you able to verify if the prototype Blackbird have a 68040 CPU?

Looks like the screen is the usual 640x480 panel from the rest of the 500-series; is it the same grayscale screen as the 520?

Thanks Jon! I think it's a plain LC040 but I can't see the screen well enough, unfortunately. It does seem to be the exact same panel as the stock 520 but I haven't cracked it open to be sure just yet.

I think I have an extra 520c LCD somewhere, if you want to upgrade it to color?

Also bear in mind that many of these older LCDs need to be recapped too, and doing that might bring it back to life (unless there's lines and stuff, which would indicate other trouble).

c

I'll probably want to keep it the way it is since it is a prototype, thanks though C! 

That's what I figured - I haven't seen a cap reference but I'll probably try and find one soon. I have a spare working 520 screen in any case.

 

[olePigeon]

Not to hijack JRL's thread, but I found not one but three TEMPEST keyboards at the same recycler.  No TEMPEST Macs, though, but both JRL and I got there way after the stuff had been picked through.  Clearly not picked through enough! :lol:

So if there were prototypes and TEMPEST keyboards there, I have to wonder what other people took home with them.

I'm definitely going back next time they get a shipment.

 

[olePigeon]

Also, I was pretty tempted by those SGI machines.  They just looked cool.

 

[CC_333]

@olePigeon Wow, I want to see this recycle center!

Please let me know when a shipment comes in!

@JRL I understand.  I have a spare 520 (greyscale) LCD with vinegar syndrome, if you want a project?

c