Mac Classic II Rescued From Garbage Pile

[Elfen]

Got home late from the Dr's appointment yesterday which sort of angered me for the delays. But along the way one of the local schools made a trash pile of old computer junk. It as just a few machines, but still. I wish I had a truck for I would have loaded it all up and them sort through them later. But the Janitors were instructed to break screens and key boards and cut cables where ever possible. But in the pile I managed to pull out a fairly intact Mac Classic II and took it home. After a bit of Mac de-bugging (just in case - see: https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/23697-macbugs-literally/?p=246083 ), I turned it on.

Thick Bars on the screen with no Bong. Hard drive does spin up. Took it apart, and I was expecting a much larger board but the Classic II board is TINY! Its like somebody took a SE/30 through a rip saw and cut it in half! But the caps leaked. But that's half the story.

The board has UV-Window EPROMS: 27C010s, aka - 1 Meg EPROMS, four of them! There's two jumpers to the side of them: J13 (2/2 MBytes) and J14 (512K PROMS). Then there is this edge connector that says "ROM/FPU EXPANSION SLOT" All this on a very tiny board. It looks like it has 8megs soldered on the board, and 2 30pin 1MB SIMMs on the slots. The case was VERY Yellowed.

Any info or discussion on this unit would be great. Cant wait to power up the HD on another system to see what is on it. Probably some school admin software that I help write long ago.

Edit: It's 2Megs on the board, read the RAM Chip ID# wrong.

 

[MinerAl]

It's amazing how much room the 8 SIMM slots took up on an SE/30 board.  Get rid of 6 of them, and the PDS, and take into account 5 years of making things smaller, and the Classic II board makes sense.  It really drives home how low end these machines were in the product line.

I think Uniserver was working on a DIY FPU board for these.

 

[Paralel]

An FPU board by itself isn't very helpful, but a ROM/FPU board, now we're talking.

 

[td4dotnet]

Good luck with this Elfen it sounds like a real challenge!

 

[unity]

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/19803-macintosh-classic-ii-fpu-math-card-picture/page-3

looks like 

gsteemsohas taken over the project.

 

[Elfen]

There were 2 5200/5300 AIOs in the pile, screens kicked in, panels opened and things removed from within. If they were whole, I would have picked one of them up. That was sad to see in the least.

As for the Classic II, I've been reading up on it here and there and a recap should fix it. From the looks of it, the traces look OK though some need to be resoldered. The SE/30, a lot of traces were cut by the goo, but its fixable. Maybe I can do both at once.

 

[notcrazy_iminsane]

the Janitors were instructed to break screens and key boards and cut cables where ever possible.

This always, always, upsets me. They're going to toss it out anyways. Why not offer it for donations, to recyclers who re-purpose it, Or just let people pick it up if they want it? Always unnecessary destruction....

Maybe I'm just weird for getting emotionally attached to computers...

Anyways, great job on saving the Classic II from a crunched up fate!

 

[SuperToaster]

Not to worry I get emotionally attached to computers too... The janitors can take their anger out on something else lol. They should try a stress ball... especially since I wouldn't really want to kick a CRT in might accidentally get shocked. Whatever school district this is the procedure is different at my local schools. They actually give them away to other schools or let people have them. The worst they did to the iMac I got from them is removed the RAM. 

I'm glad you saved the Classic II, for compact macs are usually long gone from the local schools around where I live. Good luck on the restoration of the Classic II

 

[Paralel]

The reason for the destruction is strictly a fiscal one. If they destroy the system so it is unusable they can claim the depreciation and "loss" on the system differently with regard to taxes than if they did something else with it.

 

[Elfen]

NYC does not have a Computer/Electronics Recycling Center like some cities. Thus a lot of city agencies either contract an out of state company like Advanced Recovery (thanks to the former mayor Bloomberg who did business with them before taking office), or it ends up the trash heap before it goes into in a landfill.

Back in '02, I negotiated with Apple Inc. and several schools in NYC's District #3 for an upgrade of their old Mac and Apple Labs. Thus for $50G per school, each school got the upgrades they wanted and Apple got their support contracts, though some schools were $120G to upgrade and other $20G to upgrade, things balanced themselves out. Added to the contract was an additional purchase of 1 laptop per student 1 to 2 years later when wifi was proved doable in a school (which it was). I could have gotten 10% per school but did not because I was a school employee and though it to be a conflict of interest. Then school per school, Apple came in and did the upgrades. But there were all these LCs (from old Mac 68Ks, LCs Pizza Boxes, and 500/5000 AIOs) all put into the basement for future disposal. I went and ask about how about donating some of the stuff to various non-profits. About 20% were donated. But the rest waited for the trash heap. I asked about selling them to the parents of the students and was told that they could not be sold.

Then I realized, there was a law in the books "Once (it) goes into the trash dump, its available to who ever wanted it for free to pick up and take away as soon as it touched the ground." That's the point, as soon as it touched the ground, so I could not hand the machine over to anyone but I had put it on the floor with the trash and if anyone there decided to take it then, well, thats the point. So through word of mouth, I got the students to get their parents and as I took the machines out to the trash one by one and put them on the floor, I signaled to the students/parents to go get it. And a lot of good machines ended up in good homes. Perhaps 12% of all the machines ended up in the dump when this was over. I managed to take a questionable LC III home from the trash with a cracked case no body wanted, just the pizza box, no keyboard or monitor. Back then I got it working when I got it home.

A lot of upper dept. heads got pissed, even though these machines were put in the trash by their orders. So it's an ego thing, its a "Keeping the poor, poor" thing. At least in NYC. So It's not a fiscal one. NYC Spends $5/pound of computer "junk" in disposing it when it gets carted away. I gave them a chance to make up the loss by selling the old machines like some other school districts do. I know Advanced Recovery sells each machine they pick up for 200% to 2000%, and in rare cases have sold a shipping containers stuffed with computer junk to governments like India at $5M per container!

This is the standard practice in NYC. in 2010 I could have picked up 220 laptops with their powerpacs (PCs and Macs) but was fired before I could intercept them. They are still doing it today; but I managed to save 1 Classic II from it. And I feel good.

 

[Scott Baret]

If possible, take a photo of what's in the expansion slot. It usually went unused on Classic IIs, and most who did utilize it used a math coprocessor card in that slot.

Classic IIs are extremely prone to bad caps. There were some going as early as 2002-2003 because of them, but few really thought to look into the capacitors at the time.

The Classic and Classic II boards are indeed small. This was part of Apple's cost-cutting measure with the Classic line.