cheesestraws
Well-known member
IIRC this is specifically the one that was recommended in the service manual for most of them, though.
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Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.
restoring a battery-bombed IIcx
- Thread starter bigmessowires
- Start date
IIRC this is specifically the one that was recommended in the service manual for most of them, though.
Phipli
Well-known member
I believe it was a supplier said "We used that". Which is one person's memory of a snapshot in time.
The grease they're talking about is better at staying where it is put is the only reason you'd use it specifically. Its only other benefit is that it performs better in high load contact patches, which is not applicable in this application.
As a mechanical engineer, I find it frustrating that the other grease is promoted as they only way, almost religiously, on this site.
In locomotives we use greases that meet requirements, not the one single product that a suplier once told us they used to use.
Other cereals are available.
/end of rant
cheesestraws
Well-known member
I hate to break it to you but these aren't locomotives.
Phipli
Well-known member
bigmessowires
Well-known member
OK folks, after fifteen days this Macintosh IIcx restoration has finally reached the finish line. It began with a non-functional bucket of parts, coated in capacitor juice and exploded battery goo, and ended with a completely restored and fully working Mac. This is now the best-looking machine in my lineup, with a clean case that's virtually free of any yellowing, and a sexy blue power LED.
In case you've forgotten where this all started, the IIcx was in sorry shape with capacitor damage and battery damage:
Repairs and upgrades made:
Many thanks to everybody who offered troubleshooting help, especially @Phipli who always offered productive advice for everything that went wrong. I definitely wouldn't have finished this Mac restoration without all the assistance I received here from 68kMLA.
So there it is, a Macintosh IIcx with 16 MHz 68030 and 20 MB RAM, working as well as the day it was built. Here are some photos of the finished product:
In case you've forgotten where this all started, the IIcx was in sorry shape with capacitor damage and battery damage:
Repairs and upgrades made:
- Brushed clean the motherboard with alcohol to remove battery/cap residue
- Hosed down the case and washed with soap
- Removed the old battery holder, which crumbled into plastic cheese in my hands
- Recapped the motherboard with tantalums
- Repaired three broken traces in the soft-power circuit
- Replaced 74HC132 at UM2 and reflowed solder joints on the other chips in the soft-power circuit
- Repaired a broken trace to the RAM mux that prevented 4MB SIMMs from working
- Restored a damaged RAM SIMM by reflowing solder joints on the RAM chip
- Installed a new battery holder
- Swapped the power LED for a blue LED
- Bathed the motherboard in hot soapy water followed by a full alcohol submersion
- Replaced the gear in the floppy drive eject motor
- Lubed the gummed-up floppy mechanism
- Brushed and scrubbed the floppy drive controller PCB to remove conductive goo causing problems
- Replaced the PSU with an ATX conversion inside the original PSU enclosure
- Installed a MeowToast CR2032 battery
- Installed a Macintosh High Resolution video card
- Installed a Zulu SCSI hard disk
- Replaced the missing programmer/reset buttons
- Played one game of Tetris Max
Many thanks to everybody who offered troubleshooting help, especially @Phipli who always offered productive advice for everything that went wrong. I definitely wouldn't have finished this Mac restoration without all the assistance I received here from 68kMLA.
So there it is, a Macintosh IIcx with 16 MHz 68030 and 20 MB RAM, working as well as the day it was built. Here are some photos of the finished product:
jmacz
Well-known member
You did so much work on this, and it's all really awesome. I think I've repaired 3 or 4 IIcx machines over the past few years, and it's always nice hearing that chime and seeing that you converted a piece of junk into something working again.
Have you got a LocalTalk or Ethernet network going between your machines yet? The IIcx would make a neat fileserver.
Mk.558
Well-known member
I recommend a super thin coat of grease on the carrier underneath the disk chassis assembly.
Easy to pop off those little disks with a razor blade or similar and remove the carrier. As for grease, this is a light duty application and as long as it's not some really specialized grease, I doubt it will really matter as long as you but the a super thin film on and it's not some kind of aggressive stuff or something that hardens faster than normal. Some molydisulfide or lithium grease -- sure. This isn't a high temperature, high sheer, high loading, long endurance, water/weather resistance, disimilar metals, extremely low temperature, spacecraft application, or otherwise specialized application.
Side note: I once had some guy lecture me that there's 4 types of grease, red, yellow or something and two other greases. Something color related. It happened like 5 years ago. His CV axle boot was ripped and he wanted me to put axle grease into it. I refused as we don't do that kind of thing: furthermore, if the boot is ripped, dirt and water ingress is a high likelihood, it needs to be either rebuilt/inspected and done over with actual CV axle grease. Upon later research I found out that the color of a grease is not even a secondary factor, greases can have a default variety of different colors based on base stock and additives, and if anything, the color is just a dye that is put in to help with identification/branding (i.e. Lucas Red & Tacky).
Easy to pop off those little disks with a razor blade or similar and remove the carrier. As for grease, this is a light duty application and as long as it's not some really specialized grease, I doubt it will really matter as long as you but the a super thin film on and it's not some kind of aggressive stuff or something that hardens faster than normal. Some molydisulfide or lithium grease -- sure. This isn't a high temperature, high sheer, high loading, long endurance, water/weather resistance, disimilar metals, extremely low temperature, spacecraft application, or otherwise specialized application.
Side note: I once had some guy lecture me that there's 4 types of grease, red, yellow or something and two other greases. Something color related. It happened like 5 years ago. His CV axle boot was ripped and he wanted me to put axle grease into it. I refused as we don't do that kind of thing: furthermore, if the boot is ripped, dirt and water ingress is a high likelihood, it needs to be either rebuilt/inspected and done over with actual CV axle grease. Upon later research I found out that the color of a grease is not even a secondary factor, greases can have a default variety of different colors based on base stock and additives, and if anything, the color is just a dye that is put in to help with identification/branding (i.e. Lucas Red & Tacky).
pax
Well-known member
Thanks for sharing this journey with us @bigmessowires. Truly inspirational.
Phipli
Well-known member
It's funny, what is it about these old machines that we're now willing to put so much time into fixing them, but when they were new, despite them being worth more than ten times as much, we never would have.
I guess it is the fact that price aside, they're not made any more and so any scrapped machine won't be replaced. Combined with better access to information and tools.
Plus I'm not a child.
I guess it is the fact that price aside, they're not made any more and so any scrapped machine won't be replaced. Combined with better access to information and tools.
Plus I'm not a child.
bigmessowires
Well-known member
I've often said that broken computers should be priced above working ones. A broken computer is an engineering challenge and an interesting project. Now that it's all working, I can show it off with some pride. If somebody just gave me an already-working IIcx I don't think I'd care about it nearly as much.
jmacz
Well-known member
Been looking for an SE/30 and/or a 512K, and skipped over all the working ones for this exact reason, it lacks the challenge (and fun from solving it). Or maybe it's me being cheap and wanting a cheap one to fix. Haha.
jdcurry
Well-known member
My SE/30 project still isn't quite finished but I couldn't handle cap resoldering myself and got some assistance from someone local who did it inexpensively. Would rather spend the money to have it done correctly than attempt it myself at this point in my life. But if I had more time and a nicer soldering iron I think it would have been okay. Also, some test boards would be nice too. Still need to install a new speaker and configure the ZuluSCSI stuff.
jdcurry
Well-known member
I think the list of tasks you provided is a really good template for a lot of bombed Macs. (Obviously, it's not an exhaustive list but still quite thorough and has a lot of good things to try.) I'm going to keep a copy of that saved.
Also been a huge fan of your products for many years now, starting with the original Floppy Emu. I wish I knew how all those devices worked more intimately as someone who has been interested in electronics from a young age.
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