Macintosh classic II - office find

[r3su]

So, i was helping someone sort out our office garage and found a classic ii and thought it could be repurposed for something rather than just taking up room.

Plugged it in but it displays vertical lines which I believe is a pretty standard thing and the logic board could probably do with a clean (will do that later this evening).

My other idea (since found its fairly common) was to put a pi in it so that it could run some current programs etc. I was hoping to be able to use the CRT display and would attempt to keep all the existing internals intact - possibly removing the HDD and disk drive to get enough space for the pi.

I was hoping at hijacking the video feed from the logic board with the pi rather than do much chopping, but it appears to be a little less simple than that.

Does anyone have any experience with repurposing the CRT to work with modern hardware? or could someone point me in the right direction (please not the door)?

 

[Macdrone]

logic board needs cleaned and recapped.  imagine its an all in 1 unit.

 

[Elfen]

60% of dead Classics IIs can be revived with just a logic board wash (ammonia/distilled water solution and then an alcohol rinse - blown dry!). If that brings your Classic II back to life, congrats! All it needs is a recap.

90 - 95% of dead Classic IIs can be revived with just a recapping if the wash fails to bring it back to life. This is good news as the Classic II is the easier of most boards to fix. But sometimes the damage by the cap goo is too great and you need to sit down and figure out where the traces are broken and fix them.

Is it not possible to put a R-Pi into the Classic II case and use the video from the Classic as its screen. You would need to remove all that and put in a whole new LCD display into the unit for the R-Pi to work as you want it. This is too much work than it is worth and it would be easier to fix the Classic II than it is to do this with the R-Pi.

 

[bibilit]

the Classic II is the easier of most boards to fix

The Classic is the easier, the Classic II is a bit more complex with all those tiny caps, not the sort you can deal when you are a beginner.

 

[MinerAl]

There are occasionally 9" B/W POS SVGA CRT monitors on eBay that fit nicely in a Classic case.  F'rinstance

They fit and look much much more stock than any flatscreen ever will, but they are limited by lack-of-color and resolution (800x600 max).

 

[eR1c]

Classic II's are nice, ...please restore it or give it to someone who will.  

I cringe at all the aquarium conversions, cut-up to become a gaming device or cleaned out to fit an LCD and Pi Macs out there. I started my Classic II up for a friend the other day, he was blown away by how cool it looked and how simple but effective the software programs are on it.  They were great machines and can be very useful for many applications in their stock form.  I use one of my vintage Macs about 3-5x a week for all sorts of things.

 

[Bunsen]

Is it not possible to put a R-Pi into the Classic II case and use the video from the Classic as its screen. This is too much work than it is worth and it would be easier to fix the Classic II than it is to do this with the R-Pi.

Garbage.   This has been done several times.  There are a number of threads here mentioning and linking to projects which have the original compact Mac CRT and analog board driven from new hardware.  Granted, I don't recall seeing one using the Raspberry Pi specifically, but there is one that used a Beaglebone.

 

[Scott Baret]

Recap the board. Classic IIs were showing cap failure at a very early age. Get the analog board done while you're at it as preventative maintenance.

If you're going to do a Rπ, do it on a Classic I. They're a dime a dozen. Classic IIs are a little less common and are more viable as a machine in the first place (they can even run System 7.6).

 

[CC_333]

Agreed. The Classic II, despite it's shortcomings (32-bit CPU stunted by a 16-bit bus, 10 MB RAM ceiling), is a decent machine for what it is. The Classic one is also rather nice, but to me, it's basically a fancy Plus with a built in hard drive (it does have that nice ROM disk though).

c