New CC with a few surprises

[re4mat]

So I picked up a new Colour Classic on eBay. The photos were pretty bad, but it looked like it was in decent condition. The listing said "Mac color classic, very nice condition, starts right up! It has very light yellowing and is very clean and well kept." It arrived yesterday, and it definitely doesn't match the description. The only part that does match the description is the front bezel, which is actually in very good condition. ('Just needs a couple hours in retrobrite to brighten it up a little bit.) But the rest of the case I wouldn't categorise as "very nice" at all.

The right side of the back bucket looks like it's been sanded. Sanded! Uggggggh. There were no photos of this part of the case in the listing. There's also a couple gouges further back that didn't show up well in this photo. I was a tad furious to discover this.

But okay, whatever; I can use the best back bucket from one of my other CCs. The front bezel on this one is in the best shape out of the three that I now own, so okay. Let's turn it on and see how the electronics are.

I plug it in, plug in my keyboard and mouse, flip the switch on the back, press the power on the keyboard, and… nothing. So I leave it plugged in overnight. This morning I try to boot it up and… nothing again. "Starts right up" indeed. Time to pull the logic board and see if there's anything wrong.

The poster didn't mention anything about the PDS card, but I could see from the rear photo in the listing that it had some kind of ethernet card. Imagine my surprise when I pull the logic board out and see this little guy:

Pretty nice bonus! After I pull that off, it's time to take a look at the logic board itself. It doesn't look too good. Underneath where the Presto Plus was seated, it's pretty dusty. There may be some electrolyte in there, but it's hard to tell.

Over by the PRAM battery, however, I'm pretty sure that's electrolyte. It looks like it's even corroded some of the pins on that chip next to it.

I'll be pulling the back bucket off in a few minutes to see how everything looks. I can see a lot of dust around the fan exhaust, so I expect it to be not the cleanest. If it's not too bad, though, I'm going to pop in the working logic board I have and see if I can get it to start up with that.

 

[re4mat]

So aside from a bit of dust, the insides look fairly decent. I did notice one part on the analogue board, though, where it looks like the PCB itself has been… burnt? Any ideas what it could be? Is it anything to worry about?

I put it back together and popped in the known working logic board, then plugged everything in and booted it up, and… success!

Aside from a little geometry adjusting, this monitor looks perfect!

The next thing I tried was inserting a blank floppy disk. It read it and asked to initialise it, which I let it do. The initialisation was successful and the disk mounted. I could copy files to and from and everything seemed fine. So then I went to eject it, and that's where I hit a problem. It sounded like it fired the ejection mechanism, but it didn't actually push the disk out. After awhile it just re-mounted the disk. I tried it again a couple times before resorting to the paper clip. When I used the paperclip, though, it felt like the disk was snagged on something, and it took a little bit of force to pull the disk out. With the disk out, however, it behaved as if the disk was still in the drive — the ejection mechanism fired, it attempted to re-mount the disk, then told me that the disk couldn't be recognised and needs to be either ejected or initialised. If I choose 'eject', it does the same thing; the ejection mechanism fires, then it attempts to re-mount the disk, and comes up with the same dialogue window. If I try to initialise it (because I'm weird like that and wanted to see what happened) the initialisation fails, the ejection mechanism fires, it attempts to re-mount the disk, and I get the same dialogue window. I tried this a few times, but got nowhere. So then I decided to just flip the power switch off and boot it back up again. Here's where it got weird — when the screen came up, I saw the floppy disk icon (sans question mark) for awhile and heard some grinding in the floppy drive, as if it were trying to boot off the floppy drive, before it gave me the happy mac and booted up off the hard drive. When it got to the desktop, though, it immediately started doing the same thing again. It thought there was a floppy in the drive, attempted to mount it, gave me the eject/initialise dialogue window, and dropped me back in the same loop.

I'm old enough that I've used floppies for quite a large chunk of my life, and I've never seen something like this. Any ideas? I'm going to try inserting the disk again to see if that does anything, but I'm sure it's going to be stuck in there again and I'm out of ideas beyond that.

 

[jsarchibald]

I've been in the same situation before and am usually able to negotiate a discount.

 

[Macdrone]

Wow a presto plus. That's cool.

 

[uniserver]

what did you end up dropping down for this?

seems beat… what is the resolution of the monitor.

i am wondering if they mystified the monitor A/b board, that is why those diodes were cooking the snot outta the PCB.

if you wanna sell that presto plus i know a guy that will give you a pretty penny for it( if he has not already found one). His name on here is zackl.

some sellers on ebay are slicker then snot on a door knob.

 

[bibilit]

I'm old enough that I've used floppies for quite a large chunk of my life, and I've never seen something like this. Any ideas?

In front of the floppy drive, you have got several micro switches (3 if i remember clearly) one of them is there for floppy size, the second one to detect floppy protection and the last one is a floppy detection.

So the drive is able to know the size of the floppy (400 k / 800k /1.44 k) if a floppy is protected and if the floppy is present or not.

If one of them got stuck, you can have those kind of troubles.

try to remove the drive and lubricate it, will probably be fine afterwards.

 

[techknight]

Careful. You might get shot down by violating one of the forum rules!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Dunno about the rest of the mods, but that seemed like a generic enough warning to slide, shall we say?

This is especially true since it seems to have been the seller who wound up missing fingers after shaking hands with the buyer on this deal. :lol:

That card alone is easily worth a couple of excellent condition CCs. FABULOUS conquest! :approve:

 

[olePigeon]

That Presto Plus is the real gem, in my opinion. I'd consider the CC a bonus.

 

[uniserver]

consider the CC a bonus.

lol that is one way to think of it

 

[techknight]

Yea, your right. No takky needed

 

[applefreak]

my colour classic with presto plus

at start up

not fast enough to play Quicktime movies

 

[uniserver]

how is it able to get the LC-040 to run at 66mhz? wow

i thought the 040 had a thermal envelope of 50mhz.

 

[CC_333]

i thought the 040 had a thermal envelope of 50mhz

It does, as far as I know.

how is it able to get the LC-040 to run at 66mhz?

I think it's clock doubled? I vaguely remember that Low End Mac or some such listed the PowerBook 190's CPU speed (for example) as being 66 MHz, but noted that the bus speed, and therefore the total effective speed of the machine, is only 33 MHz, so I'd say he's running a 66/33 MHz LC040 (as in the P57x).
I think the reason for this is that the 040 runs at that speed internally (which is probably, in part, why it's faster for a given speed than the 030), but it's bus speed is slower (for compatibility?)

I really don't know. I could be spewing nonsense...

But this is my understanding of it.

c

 

[re4mat]

Careful. You might get shot down by violating one of the forum rules!

Noted! I'll be a bit more careful in the future. I thought if I linked to the auction that would be going too far, since it would then be identifying the seller. Mostly I wanted to do a "first look" post — aside from the couple of problems that it has, I'm actually really pleased with the purchase.

what did you end up dropping down for this?

$325 + $35 for shipping. For a good front bezel and monitor, and a surprise Presto Plus, I'd call that a steal!

seems beat… what is the resolution of the monitor.i am wondering if they mystified the monitor A/b board, that is why those diodes were cooking the snot outta the PCB.

It's just the standard 512×384. Do you think the A/B will be okay to use as is? I mean, I can also just use the A/B from one of my other CCs after I fix them, but if the A/B in this one is going to be fine then I'll just use it. I don't know how I would test it, though, other than just letting it run until it fails.

if you wanna sell that presto plus i know a guy that will give you a pretty penny for it( if he has not already found one). His name on here is zackl.

I'm actually planning on keeping it! I was pretty stoked when I pulled it out and saw what it was.

In front of the floppy drive, you have got several micro switches (3 if i remember clearly) one of them is there for floppy size, the second one to detect floppy protection and the last one is a floppy detection.So the drive is able to know the size of the floppy (400 k / 800k /1.44 k) if a floppy is protected and if the floppy is present or not.

If one of them got stuck, you can have those kind of troubles.

try to remove the drive and lubricate it, will probably be fine afterwards.

Excellent, thank you! I'll take it apart probably this Sunday and see what I can see. (And post pics, of course. )