Newly acquired Mac Portable (M5120)

[Berenod]

Had a pretty darned good afternoon!

Downloaded system 6.0.8 floppy images from winworldpc.com, they give a good overview which are 400k, 800k or 1.44mb images.
Went in my hardware archive, dug out an old pentium2 laptop...
Internal floppy drive appeared to be dead, so some digging around for an external with appropriate cable, had to take that one apart and lubricate as nothing much moved initially.

Got it working eventually, then a rather long search for a properly good floppy which didn't churn out format error (out of my archive of several hundreds).
Used winimage to create the system 6.08 floppy...

 

[Berenod]

Moved over to the portable, inserted the floppy, immediately got greeted by a happy Mac so me happy as well.
Floppy drive happily churning away, and after a while I had a functional OS running on my 32 year old "portable".

 

[Berenod]

 

[Berenod]

So happy as a pig in shit

100€ for the portable, 16€ for a 4.5Ah 6V sealed lead acid battery, about 6 hours of painstakingly recapping, we have all the caps in stock at work, along with a hot air desolder station, regular solder station, at to that copious amounts of flux and half a meter of desoldering wick...
Als have a soldering microscope at work, pretty darned practivcal with eyes as old as mine...

Now waiting for the blue SCSI (37€)...
I'd love to get the old conner back to work, but that is going to be hit and miss (likely miss)...

 

[Berenod]

I believe you can get an adapter to get standard SCSI drives working. (Including the SCSI-2-SD)
Edit: https://www.ebay.com/itm/312973273392
Here’s an eBay link to see an example. Try to find a similar one in your country.

I have ordered a scsi/sd solution, to get it running correctly and being able to install stuff.
I am however looking at what you suggest as well.
Mainly because I would like to keep the Portable as original as possible (so with noisy spinning HD ) and the originalConner drives in Apple Portable version (the CP3045) are stupid expensive (>300€ for a working one), while there is a way better chance to pick up a much more affordable scsi drive with regular connector (would be a CP3040 then).

I will obviously still try to take a shot at repairing the drive I got with the portable.

 

[LaPorta]

That is awesome! For comparison, I got my Portable in 2001 for $100. You got a great deal. So glad to see it up and running. If you manage to source a Maceffects card, it's totally worth it.

 

[Berenod]

That is awesome! For comparison, I got my Portable in 2001 for $100. You got a great deal. So glad to see it up and running. If you manage to source a Maceffects card, it's totally worth it.

Thanks! It really was a gamble! In Europe it's hard to find a non-functioning Portable under 300€...
Working but not yet recapped and you're looking at 500€ or more.

Definitely trying to find one of the Maceffects cards.
Would already be pretty happy with an original 3Mb card.
Rather limited with the 1Mb onboard now.

Definitely a keeper for life now

 

[mg.man]

Well done getting this veteran going again!! I recently restored one for a swap with another vintage computing enthusiast... As you say, labor of love, but totally worth it when successful! I may have a memory card spare... I think most of mine are 1M, but might have a 3M? Drop me a PM if you're interested - I'm in the UK...

 

[Berenod]

The BlueSCSI arrived, very fast, turns out OneGeekArmy is a fellow Belgian.

Found out the Portable, like the Plus, does not supply power on the DB25 scsi connector, so had to power the BlueSCSI through the small USB port.
Stuck a blank 50MB .hda on a sd card, and straight away the Portable has a (blistering fast) hard drive again

Will soon put a complete OS with all the software I can find straight on the SD card (using basilisk), easier then always creating floppy's with my old Pentium II laptop!

 

[LaPorta]

Looks like you are well underway there! I have been experimenting with best OS combination on my Portable. I have two HD partitions: one with 6.0.8 (obviously the fastest), and the other I have been trying 7.1, 7.5.5, and now I think I have gotten to the sweet spot with 7.1.1 with System Update 3.0 and the original Control Strip from the PowerBook 500 series. The original 7.1 produced unacceptable lag in opening folders; 7.5.5 for some reason took probably close to a minute to open the Chooser for some strange reason. I have 9 MB of RAM from Maceffects card, so the RAM isn't an issue. I know that the SCSI2SD is fast enough, since 6.0.8 is blazing. Just a combination of the Portable and 7 I guess. I await some way-off, future made Portable accelerator card...

 

[techknight]

MacEffects WAS making new ram cards, last time we spoke they could not find any new ram chips due to shortages. So for now, you will have to try and find used ones.

Working on a new design to get around that problem. those chips aren't made anymore.

 

[Sideburn]

I’m in the same boat. Just bought a dead Macintosh portable, re-capped it, replaced the hybrid board, fixed traces and got it up and running except the Conner drive (I carefully opened it up and cleaned out the goo) just spins up and the mac only shows a mouse cursor so I have to disconnect it and connect an external scsi drive or boot from the floppy.

Unfortunately the screen has a single pixel horizontal line running across the middle of the screen and I doubt I can fix that. It seems to be inverted actually.

So I’m thinking about a BlueSCSI v2 desktop version but need to find a source for a 50 pin to 34 pin adapter like this one: https://androda.work/product/macintosh-portable-adapter-for-bluescsi-v2/

No telling of or when his will be in stock…

Anyone know of any other solutions?

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Androda is more active on tinkerdifferent.com so if you have questions to ask about stock, that's the place to do it.

For your line, not much you can do really. It becomes a common fault with age and it's got no easy fix unfortunately.

 

[Sideburn]

Androda is more active on tinkerdifferent.com so if you have questions to ask about stock, that's the place to do it.

For your line, not much you can do really. It becomes a common fault with age and it's got no easy fix unfortunately.

I didn’t think so and didn’t want to risk pulling the display apart and making things worse…

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

I think some people have had luck on other panels reflowing the ribbons going from the LCD's soldered driver board to the glass panel itself, but it's a very iffy process that I don't know too much about. Some people have used the oven for this IIRC as well.
I'd recommend leaving it alone if it doesn't bother you too much.

 

[Sideburn]

I think some people have had luck on other panels reflowing the ribbons going from the LCD's soldered driver board to the glass panel itself, but it's a very iffy process that I don't know too much about. Some people have used the oven for this IIRC as well.
I'd recommend leaving it alone if it doesn't bother you too much.

What’s I found interesting thought is when the display is up the line is white and then when shutting down the line turns black so it’s not “dead” and makes me think it’s not a connection problem but more a bad flip flop or chip related issue.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Yeah something like that is likely logic related. Either a faulty driver chip or a soldering issue.

 

[wymtb]

So I’m thinking about a BlueSCSI v2 desktop version but need to find a source for a 50 pin to 34 pin adapter like this one: https://androda.work/product/macintosh-portable-adapter-for-bluescsi-v2/

No telling of or when his will be in stock…

Anyone know of any other solutions?

You might could order pcbs and solder your own one:

GitHub - alxlab-zone66x/macintosh_portable_50-pin_hard_drive_adapter: An adapter to allow you to use any standard 50-pin SCSI device as the Macintosh Portable hard drive.

An adapter to allow you to use any standard 50-pin SCSI device as the Macintosh Portable hard drive. - GitHub - alxlab-zone66x/macintosh_portable_50-pin_hard_drive_adapter: An adapter to allow you ...

github.com

 

[MacUp72]

wow, interesting machine..from the photos it seems that it actually is based on desktop architecture?

 

[Sideburn]

Androda is more active on tinkerdifferent.com so if you have questions to ask about stock, that's the place to do it.

For your line, not much you can do really. It becomes a common fault with age and it's got no easy fix unfortunately.

Well shoot. Today it has decided to shoot ANOTHER line across the screen. Not sure if it is related but I opened it up and connected the hard drive back up to see if I could get it to work and noticed there’s another line now. The connector seems fine and I tried pushing areas around the board. I need to rule out if it’s the display or the logic board… what a pain. Love this stuff