LazarusNine's Acquisitions

[LazarusNine]

Hello all,

This is a start to my acquisitions thread. I've snagged a few 'new' old Macs in the last few weeks, which I'll perhaps detail in subsequent posts. However, as I've just completed a purchase, I figured that would be the first one to mention. Interestingly, it's not a 68k machine (those are my preferred models). However, it is a first generation PPC Mac, so I feel like I can justify the purchase in my own warped little brain.

I was the winning (and sole) bidder on a Power Macintosh 7100/AV with monitor, mouse and keyboard for £25 + £10 delivery. The machine looks lightly used and the seller (an original owner) claims that it was not heavily used even when first purchased. The first thing I'll do when it arrives is get that PRAM battery out of there post haste! I'll glance at the capacitors, though I imagine the 7100 won't be high on my recap list, as I still have an LC III to get done (among others). Anyway, thanks for allowing me to share. I'll post pics when it arrives.

Regards,

LazarusNine

 

[trag]

I was the winning (and sole) bidder on a Power Macintosh 7100/AV with monitor, mouse and keyboard for £25 + £10 delivery. The machine looks lightly used and the seller (an original owner) claims that it was not heavily used even when first purchased. The first thing I'll do when it arrives is get that PRAM battery out of there post haste! I'll glance at the capacitors, though I imagine the 7100 won't be high on my recap list, as I still have an LC III to get done (among others). Anyway, thanks for allowing me to share. I'll post pics when it arrives.

The most common failure I"ve seen in PM7100s is for the heat sink grease to turn to powder and then the machine overheats after a few minutes of operation. 

The results can be very frustrating, as the failure manifests like a corrupt OS install.  So one reinstalls the OS, only that may or may not finish because of the overheating time.  Etc.   The time I was cursed with this, I only figured it out because once, I got screen artifacts of a type which I had seen before from overheating PPC601s. 

Anyway, while you're changing that PRAM battery, pull the heat sink, clean off the old grease (powder residue, unless someone else already refreshed it) and apply new heat sink grease.   Be careful not to apply pressure to the CPU, they're prone to cracking, and do not over-apply the replacement grease, nor get any on the pins of the CPU.   I killed a PPC601 that way once, by getting heat sink grease all over the pins.  Sigh.

 

[LazarusNine]

Thanks for the tips. I'll get some thermal paste on order and be careful in my application. Does the heat sink come off rather easily? Any tricks or methods I should employ?

 

[LazarusNine]

I just had a nice conversation with the guy who originally bought the 7100. He worked as an architect and bought the computer and all of the gear that came with it for a colleague - that colleague subsequently left four months after the purchase and the computer has gone largely unused in all this time! What a shame for the guy who paid something like £4500 for everything altogether right when the PPCs came out.

 

[finkmac]

Which monitor?

You got any setup pictures? I love matching sets!

 

[LazarusNine]

Hey fink, I'll take some pics today, as the computer arrives in a few hours.

 

[LazarusNine]

Well, I got extremely lucky. It turns out that the 7100 came with the Apple Extended Keyboard II, the last mechanical keyboard Apple made. I would have paid £25 just for that. Instead, I got the 7100, keyboard, mouse and the Apple Multiple Scan 17" Monitor for £25. Some people would think this purchase was crazy - I'm over the moon! =)

Here are a few photos, but they don't really get across just how clean and generally unused this Mac is:

 

 

 

[LazarusNine]

I know they're a dime a dozen, but I grabbed up a 1.25GHz dual-processor Power Mac G4 on eBay. I had the single processor version released in 2003 that I use to bridge my old Macs with the new, but was eager for a bit more of the power that can be eked out of the dual-processor version that came out the year before. No hard drive, but I grabbed an IDE to SATA converter (which was cheaper than an IDE HDD) so I can throw an old 160GB SATA drive in there.

 

[CC_333]

Yeah, the Dual 1.25 processors do help it out, especially in Mac OS X (the extra processor is basically useless in OS 9, save for the very few applications that actually use it). My first one was also a Single 1.25 GHz machine, which I subsequently sold after I got my current Dual machine.

Mine has two 250 GB drives on the internal bus, and a 1 TB drive on a SATA card. It's no speed demon by modern standards, but it's no slouch, either. The SATA card, even though it's only 1.5 Gbps, is substantially faster than the internal ATA buses, so you might eventually consider getting one.

You could also overclock the CPUs a bit, if you have the skill to do it. I think you can get them up to 1.5 GHz (or maybe 1.4x), which would be a nice boost. I would do this, but I don't have the nerve.

c

 

[LazarusNine]

Oh CC_333, I hadn't even thought of a SATA PCI card. That's a brilliant idea. So you think 'any old one' will do, or is there such a thing as a Mac-specific one? I know that I had hit and miss luck with USB 2.0 PCI cards in my single core MDD - it would be nice if I could get the PCI SATA card on the cheap.

 

[max1zzz]

The Sata cards are mac specific, but you can team a £5 PC Sil 3112 card with a £1 flash chip and flash the mac firmware onto the card to get a mac compatible sata card on the cheap

 

[trag]

Thanks for the tips. I'll get some thermal paste on order and be careful in my application. Does the heat sink come off rather easily? Any tricks or methods I should employ?

Just be careful popping the clips out from the back of the logic board.  Pretty much means pulling the logic board from the machine.

The heat sink has four metal clips that pass through holes in the logic board.  On the front they're part of a band of metal that holds the heat sink on the CPU.   They just pass through the logic board holes an 1/8" or so.

 

[LazarusNine]

The Sata cards are mac specific, but you can team a £5 PC Sil 3112 card with a £1 flash chip and flash the mac firmware onto the card to get a mac compatible sata card on the cheap

 

[LazarusNine]

The Sata cards are mac specific, but you can team a £5 PC Sil 3112 card with a £1 flash chip and flash the mac firmware onto the card to get a mac compatible sata card on the cheap

Found this on Amazon UK. This look right to you?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00O615S60/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1426202741&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX200_QL40&keywords=sil3112&dpPl=1&dpID=41pjmPUdX1L&ref=plSrch

I nearly went for this one, but canceled the order as I didn't know if it was flashable:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00NNR0C6E/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1426203014&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&keywords=PCI+sata&dpPl=1&dpID=51a%2BPisfgUL&ref=plSrch

How would I go about searching for an appropriate flash chip and indeed get the software needed to flash the card?

 

[max1zzz]

That card looks good to me

You need to find one of 3 flash chips supported by the firmware, these are the AM29LV040, PM39LV040, MX29LV040. And either flash it externally or stick it on the card blank and flash the card with the DOS flashing program, just be aware it is a PLCC32 chip which can be a bit tricky to solder. The only problem is none of these chips are easy to find in the UK, so you need to order them from china or the US (I do have a tube of the AM29LV040's though, so i could send you one)

Have a read of this thread, it details everything you need to know to flash the cards

 

[LazarusNine]

That card looks good to me

You need to find one of 3 flash chips supported by the firmware, these are the AM29LV040, PM39LV040, MX29LV040. And either flash it externally or stick it on the card blank and flash the card with the DOS flashing program, just be aware it is a PLCC32 chip which can be a bit tricky to solder. The only problem is none of these chips are easy to find in the UK, so you need to order them from china or the US (I do have a tube of the AM29LV040's though, so i could send you one)

Have a read of this thread, it details everything you need to know to flash the cards

Hey Max, thanks for the link to the thread - there's a wealth of information there and it makes a lot more sense to me. I'm not too familiar with how to flash a card externally, but perhaps getting the chip onto the card and then plugging it into my PC and flashing the appropriate firmware that way is an option I can consider.

I'm naturally very interested in one of your AM29LV040 chips. Should we keep it in the back of our minds for one of the inevitable purchases I make off you?   If it turns out I haven't found anything else to pick up, perhaps in a few weeks, we can come back to the subject of the chip? Thanks once again for all your assistance.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

The G4 PM's are nice. Mine are lower powered but I hope to have uses for them in the future.

 

[finkmac]

Oh, that's a nice matching setup. Looks good.

 

[max1zzz]

Hey Max, thanks for the link to the thread - there's a wealth of information there and it makes a lot more sense to me. I'm not too familiar with how to flash a card externally, but perhaps getting the chip onto the card and then plugging it into my PC and flashing the appropriate firmware that way is an option I can consider.

I'm naturally very interested in one of your AM29LV040 chips. Should we keep it in the back of our minds for one of the inevitable purchases I make off you?   If it turns out I haven't found anything else to pick up, perhaps in a few weeks, we can come back to the subject of the chip? Thanks once again for all your assistance.

yeah that's fine with me, just send me a PM whenever you are ready