PB145B
Well-known member
I just got a 1984 Macintosh 512K yesterday, and will be documenting the adventures with it here.
Here are the first pics I took before anything was done:
View attachment 35222View attachment 35223View attachment 35224
As you can see from the serial, this Mac started life out as a 128K. Pretty cool. It’s the best of both worlds in my opinion. The awesome history of the 128K, but with the enhanced usability of the 512K.
First thing was to pull the 400K disk drive and clean/lubricate it. Here’s some pics of the drive:
Made in August of 1984, so it’s likely original to the Mac.
Got the mechanism freed up, put it back in the Mac and it wouldn’t read anything. I pulled the drive back out and found that the stepper-motor was unplugged! So I reconnected it, and got the dreaded “click of death,” where the stepper just keeps turning and never stops. A quick clean if the sensor made no difference. Damn.
So today, I took it back out, soaked it in alcohol, scrubbed it very well with a tooth brush, and it started working! The heads go all the way back like they should now and it reads disks fine!
Here’s a pic of it booted from the internal drive:
Wonder how long it has been since that drive has worked properly? I’m guessing a long time.
Another thing I found is that the analog board has been replaced. It has a date if 1991 on it!
That’s all find and dandy, but the flyback makes a really loud high-pitch whine on occasion, which is not normal, so I have ordered another analog board for it. The one I got actually is the really old revision with the smaller flyback. I don’t know how good of an idea that was, but I’m a sucker for originality! Hopefully it’ll work...
And for anyone curious, here’s an inside-shot if the machine:
And here’s a pic of it I snapped in the dark with the LED sensors in the drive glowing:
Too cool!
That’s all for now. More to come...
Here are the first pics I took before anything was done:
View attachment 35222View attachment 35223View attachment 35224
As you can see from the serial, this Mac started life out as a 128K. Pretty cool. It’s the best of both worlds in my opinion. The awesome history of the 128K, but with the enhanced usability of the 512K.
First thing was to pull the 400K disk drive and clean/lubricate it. Here’s some pics of the drive:
Made in August of 1984, so it’s likely original to the Mac.
Got the mechanism freed up, put it back in the Mac and it wouldn’t read anything. I pulled the drive back out and found that the stepper-motor was unplugged! So I reconnected it, and got the dreaded “click of death,” where the stepper just keeps turning and never stops. A quick clean if the sensor made no difference. Damn.
So today, I took it back out, soaked it in alcohol, scrubbed it very well with a tooth brush, and it started working! The heads go all the way back like they should now and it reads disks fine!
Here’s a pic of it booted from the internal drive:
Wonder how long it has been since that drive has worked properly? I’m guessing a long time.
Another thing I found is that the analog board has been replaced. It has a date if 1991 on it!
That’s all find and dandy, but the flyback makes a really loud high-pitch whine on occasion, which is not normal, so I have ordered another analog board for it. The one I got actually is the really old revision with the smaller flyback. I don’t know how good of an idea that was, but I’m a sucker for originality! Hopefully it’ll work...
And for anyone curious, here’s an inside-shot if the machine:
And here’s a pic of it I snapped in the dark with the LED sensors in the drive glowing:
Too cool!
That’s all for now. More to come...