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New acquisitions..

patatas

Well-known member
Just got hold of the following in full working order:

IIfx with Radius Thunder IV GX 1600

IIsi 

LC475

Laserwriter 320

HP Deskjet 550c with AppleTalk 

Stylewriter

Apple CD300

2 x Mac Video adapters 8/32 RevB

2 x Macintosh II adapters

2 Apple Color Monitors 

1 Apple LC monitor

working on compiling configurations. Attached a couple of pics of the IIfx...more to follow

IMG_1003.JPG

IMG_1004.JPG

IMG_1005.JPG

 

trag

Well-known member
Nice. Especially the IIfx and Thunder IV.

Is there a story behind how you came by this haul?

 

IIfx

Well-known member
That Thunder IV is a very nice video card. I have the earlier "red nubus card" Radius/Apple 24AC and it's a good card, faster than a SuperMac Spectrum 24 in my experience. I imagine the Thunder IV to be even faster.

The IIfx's fast CPU will be able to pump data to the Thunder IV in a sufficient manner although that card is truly ideal for a Quadra or PPC machine.

Check the capacitors on your IIfx's motherboard! I have two motherboards for the IIfx and one of them is starting to have cap leakage. Apple oddly made the boards with 70% SMD tantalum with 2 SMD electrolytic cans over by the RAM and PRAM batteries. The board has pads for both types of caps, so Apple could make them with any mix of caps. The axial electrolytic caps seem to be fine.

 
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patatas

Well-known member
Nice. Especially the IIfx and Thunder IV.

Is there a story behind how you came by this haul?
These were owned by a doctor who had them in his practice but were is storage since many years when he terminated his practice.....paid $300 for the lot.

 

patatas

Well-known member
That Thunder IV is a very nice video card. I have the earlier "red nubus card" Radius/Apple 24AC and it's a good card, faster than a SuperMac Spectrum 24 in my experience. I imagine the Thunder IV to be even faster.

The IIfx's fast CPU will be able to pump data to the Thunder IV in a sufficient manner although that card is truly ideal for a Quadra or PPC machine.

Check the capacitors on your IIfx's motherboard! I have two motherboards for the IIfx and one of them is starting to have cap leakage. Apple oddly made the boards with 70% SMD tantalum with 2 SMD electrolytic cans over by the RAM and PRAM batteries. The board has pads for both types of caps, so Apple could make them with any mix of caps. The axial electrolytic caps seem to be fine.
On the to-do list. thanks

 

bibilit

Well-known member
Check the capacitors on your IIfx's motherboard! I have two motherboards for the IIfx and one of them is starting to have cap leakage. Apple oddly made the boards with 70% SMD tantalum with 2 SMD electrolytic cans over by the RAM and PRAM batteries. The board has pads for both types of caps, so Apple could make them with any mix of caps. The axial electrolytic caps seem to be fine.

 
Yes, i have seen IIfx boards with  lytics all round and others with tants and two smd caps.

Unusual setups...only seen this on the IIfx

 

olePigeon

Well-known member
These were owned by a doctor who had them in his practice but were is storage since many years when he terminated his practice.....paid $300 for the lot.
That makes sense.  Wouldn't surprise me if it was used to view xrays, cat scans, etc.

 

IIfx

Well-known member
Your board is all SMD tantalum, no SMD electrolytic. You don’t need to worry about leaking caps. The Axial caps may need to be replaced eventually when they drift out of value too much. You will know when that happens - random resets and crashes.

 

PB145B

Well-known member
Sweet! Never seen a IIfx before with all tantalum! Why couldn’t they have just done this on all Macs in the first place? Would make things so much easier today!

 

CC_333

Well-known member
To elaborate, the electrolytics probably cost something like 15¢, and the tantalums 25¢.

Multiply that by a few million units, and, despite the shorter useful lifespan, the electrolytics look like a pretty good deal!

c

 

ArmorAlley

Well-known member
Sweet! Never seen a IIfx before with all tantalum! Why couldn’t they have just done this on all Macs in the first place? Would make things so much easier today!
Do bear in mind that these machines had a realistic lifespan of 7-10 years at most. Every year, the new machines were a third or so faster the previous years.

These caps are now 28 years' old. The choice would have been caps that last 20 years or ones that 40 years and they chose the cheaper ones.

That being said, Apple charged an obscene amount of money for the IIfx ($10K) and they could have spent more on the best quality caps. However, this was a time when the thinking of Jean-Louis Gassée and massive margins were in vogue (guess the decade: here's a hint:

).
 

IIfx

Well-known member
That being said, Apple charged an obscene amount of money for the IIfx ($10K) and they could have spent more on the best quality caps. However, this was a time when the thinking of Jean-Louis Gassée and massive margins were in vogue
I would argue that Gassée would have went all tantalum in the IIfx, if only because it is best. It's clear that Apple intended to go down that road. Switching just two caps to the cheaper SMD electrolytic probably saved a fractional amount of money.

Had Gassée been left in charge of product development the LC/Classic/IIsi would not have happened. We would have seen Apple continue moving down the road of boutique workstation vendor rather than producing machines for everyone. The next-gen MacOS effort probably would have succeeded too. Would Apple have survived with Gassée as eventual CEO instead of Spindler? Probably not, Apple would get pushed out of the market by vastly cheaper IBM clone machines like many other boutique workstation vendors.

The IIfx logic board has pads for both types of SMD caps to accommodate bean counters and streamline the overall supply chain.

 
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