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Macintosh TV questions

Oh, also as far as the tuner card, I don't know what you would use it for(since there are no more analog antenna signals) except maybe as a channel 3 or 4 coaxial cable input for a device that doesn't have an RCA video output. 

 

just.in.time

Well-known member
I’m glad you were able to get your Mac TV powering up! :)

SCSI2SD will definitely work in there and should run just fine off of the SCSI bus power, no molex needed. At least that has been my experience. You may want to buy the mounting bracket adapter from there as well so you can secure it to the hard drive sled.

 
Ok, I talked to 68krazy and got the cap list for the analog board for his LC550 which should be the same board, I will order the caps and see if it works, though I will need a keyboard for the power button, and a mouse would be nice. Macdrone I would like to take you up on your offer for the keyboard and mouse, and the screws, let me know what you would it would take to do so please.

 
any ideas as to what kind of drive sled is needed for the HDD? As mine was removed before I got it, there is no sled or drive caddy I can see, I found an adapter for the interface though I am not sure if it will work. Also how does one pop the front panel off to get to the floppy and CD-ROM drives as I will need to clean and lube the floppy for sure.

 

just.in.time

Well-known member
any ideas as to what kind of drive sled is needed for the HDD?
Any of the sleds from another TV or LC5xx should work fine. Maybe others as well.

Also how does one pop the front panel off to get to the floppy and CD-ROM drives
Incredibly carefully. If you bring the machine to the very edge of a table and look up from underneath, you should be able to see how the latch is. Gently manipulate it until you are able to swing the lower edge of the front part towards you and then it should come away. Again, this part is identical to the LC5xx machines, so any videos or instruction you find for them will be applicable here. Be very careful with the plastics, they are insanely brittle.

 
Well, the drive sled I got is a little to long, I will need to trim the removal tab a bit to get the back panel to fit. I did replace the caps on the mobo and it did boot to the ?, so I burned the recovery CD I linked to above and was able to after 7 or so hours of messing with it get system 7.1 installed then upgraded to 7.6 and then finally 7.6.1 however after doing all that I decided to install the drivers for the Zip Plus drive I bought, then shut the thing down to hook up the drive to the SCSI port on the back, turend it back on and got a blank screen with no cursor or logo, so I gave it another restart and same, disconnected the Zip drive and now it wont turn on. I am thinking the next thing is to replace the caps on the analog board but is there any other suggestions?

 

Bolle

Well-known member
Are you sure the ZIP drive is a SCSI unit?

They made those with parallel ports as well. They both look the same but plugging the parallel drive into an SCSI port will at least damage the hosts SCSI controller.

 
I am 100% positive its SCSI compatible, its a Zip Plus drive, both parallel and SCSI on the same device, using its cable its "auto sensing" so it should work. and it was practically brand new, doesn't look like it had ever been used, granted I don't know if it really works or not, as I have no working PC right now with a parallel port on it.

 
ITS WORKING!!!!! kinda,

I finally bought all the caps needed to recap the analog board (have the list if anyone wants it) and its now booting, and giving the ?, was able to boot from the legacy installer disc and it could not see what was an already installed OS on the SCSI2SD adapter, after lots of trial and error I was finally able to get it to see the SD card again and installed 7,1 on to it yesterday... however I can't seem to get the mac to boot from it now, and loading the legacy CD and using drive partitioning software it shows the drive as unmounted, any suggestions?

One of the things I did is double check all the settings on the SCSI2SD adapter, to make sure they were correct, and they seem to be that way.

20190602_222105_HDR.jpg

 

just.in.time

Well-known member
Congratulations! That monitor needs some adjustment. The Macintosh TV service manual will have the instructions(it will specify cutoffs, how much black border, etc), and I think you will need Apple display service program to show the patterns.

overall though, looks good! Startup chime loud and clear?

 
Its been a few months since I set mine up but one of the things I found not clear in the set up tutorials was that you need to use a patched version of the HD SC Setup tool to mount the volume, the version I used was 7.3.5(patched). The patch allows the non Apple disk to be recognized. I see it's available on the Macintosh Garden.

 
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Macdrone

Well-known member
the tv board has caops also, but recheck the traces of the motherboard, also did you clean it well as the leftover goo and crust is conductive and can cause issues like your mentioning.  Ive washed mine and brought them back to life with more success than not.

 
Good evening, sorry I work nights and sleep during the days, anyways I finally got it working when I got home this morning, I resized the SCSI2SD image size to 1.85GB and then using the recovery CD reinstalled the OS (version 7.1 for the MacTV, I will upgrade it to 7.6.1 eventually) on to the SD card, gave it a restart and its booting from the SD now, as I have the Zip drive I thought I would install the drivers and then hook it up, drivers installed however I cant get the mac to do anything but try and boot from the zip drive, disk in or out it will not boot from the SD card. any suggestions?

and the tuner card is out of the system till I recap it, and yes I cleaned under each of the caps that looked like there was an issue, only 2 though. the rest were clean and dry as a bone. so I might not have needed to replace all the caps, but I am not willing to try and test all of them.

Also one odd issue, I have a bunch of old floppies, and not a single one will format properly, I pop it in and it tells me the disk needs to be initialized, so I have t do so, it gets thru that and starts to format then validating format then ejects and says there is a problem with the disc, could I have messed something up on the floppy drive when I cleaned it out? and it really needed the cleaning as it was full of hair and dust and would not eject or accept disks properly.

20190405_111834.jpg

 

Crutch

Well-known member
Have you tried with a fresh floppy?  It’s possible your old floppies were ruined when inserted in the drive before it was cleaned.

 
I don't really have "fresh" floppyies, all old ones sitting around, never had Macs before so I don't have anything I know is formatted mac. but I have tried a bunch after cleaning that were not used before.

 

defor

You can make up something and come back to it late
Staff member
you know, I've been wondering if it might be worthwhile to create some premade scsi2sd images for systems such as the Macintosh TV and others where floppy install was the preferred restore disc format.

I personally used the floppy images to make a restore set for my MacTVs, but would expect BMOW floppy emulator would work well too.

 

defor

You can make up something and come back to it late
Staff member
Also, the sony pcb on the tuner card can be replaced with a new pcb if it's easier than recapping, but if you're planning to recap the whole tuner, remember, theres a lot of caps INSIDE the RF cage as well.

you'll need to remove the solder locking the shield shit, but then it just pops open. not easy to recap anything in there however, but for a true "proper" recap, it's going to be needed. (I personally decided to skip everything on my tuner boards as they're doing fine)

sadly, I suffered battery damage on one of my boards, and need to replace the CUDA chip (thankfully a relatively easy replacement)

 
you know, I've been wondering if it might be worthwhile to create some premade scsi2sd images for systems such as the Macintosh TV and others where floppy install was the preferred restore disc format.

I personally used the floppy images to make a restore set for my MacTVs, but would expect BMOW floppy emulator would work well too.
The legacy recovery disc I linked to on the Macintosh Garden site works quite well from CD, and at least the MacTV does have a CD-ROM built in. And it does include all software needed for that Mac, upgrading past 7.1 however it loses the ability to call the Mac by its name for some reason when you look at about this Mac.

regardless, any suggestions on my issues with the Zip Drive?

 
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