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Screen shifted very slightly to the left (?); cold boot starts quick, but reboot very, very slow; how to diagnose and fix a floppy drive that will acc

butch

Active member
Hi, I'm new to 68kMLA and I'm working on repairing my very first Mac Plus. I have three questions and would appreciate any help any of you can provide. Thanks in advance!!!

1. The Mac Plus screen, once fully booted is very slightly shifted to the left. You can see the entire desktop, but the black outline around it is a little thinner on the left then it is on the right. What's wrong, if anything, and what do I do to realign so its even on both sides?

2. When I cold start the machine, it boots up very quickly, but when I reboot, the startup is excruciatingly slow. I just finished installing 4 1MB Simms and the machine responded positively to the upgrade, but that didn't change the slow boot on a reboot. What's up and how do I fix it?

3. Lastly, how do I diagnose and fix an internal floppy drive that will accept and read from a floppy disk, but won't eject, either upon reboot or shutdown or even when I'm trying to swap disks?

If anyone can provide answers to one or even all of these questions, I'd be very, very grateful.

Thanks very much to all for all your help.
 

danny.gonzalez.0861@gmai

Well-known member
Hi, I'm new to 68kMLA and I'm working on repairing my very first Mac Plus. I have three questions and would appreciate any help any of you can provide. Thanks in advance!!!

1. The Mac Plus screen, once fully booted is very slightly shifted to the left. You can see the entire desktop, but the black outline around it is a little thinner on the left then it is on the right. What's wrong, if anything, and what do I do to realign so its even on both sides?

2. When I cold start the machine, it boots up very quickly, but when I reboot, the startup is excruciatingly slow. I just finished installing 4 1MB Simms and the machine responded positively to the upgrade, but that didn't change the slow boot on a reboot. What's up and how do I fix it?

3. Lastly, how do I diagnose and fix an internal floppy drive that will accept and read from a floppy disk, but won't eject, either upon reboot or shutdown or even when I'm trying to swap disks?

If anyone can provide answers to one or even all of these questions, I'd be very, very grateful.

Thanks very much to all for all your help.
Hello Butch,

You need to adjust the centering rings on the yoke. Look at page 62 on the below PDF:


I did this to my SE FDHD and it worked like a charm.

On the slow startup when warm, I have no idea my friend, that one is odd but if you haven't replaced caps ,it might be a good please to start as well as preventative measure against leaks in the future. Doesn't hurt to try in my opinion.

Lastly, the FDD not ejecting can be the small plastic gear in the eject mechanism. Tons of videos online and they usually come in a pack of 4-5 so when you inevitable buy more MAC's you will have spares. Open the gear box and you will see the damaged gear. If that is not it then you might have a bad transistor on the FDD, I am currently dealing with that but my eject motor doesn't stop since my transistor is shorted it allows power to constantly flow.

Keep us posted on your findings!

P.s. Be carful with the yoke when powered on, lots of potential for shocking the poop out of yourself back there.
 

butch

Active member
Thank you so much! Your organization here is terrific! No misinformation, just solid stuff.

Thanks again!

BTW, is it perhaps possible that the PRAM battery, i.e., 4.5V battery that's in its own compartment on the back of the Mac Plus, is it perhaps possible that removal of that battery previously (along with some small green pitting from a prior battery leak) is what's causing the slow reboot, i.e., if I were to use solvent to unpit the battery compartment leads and insert a new 4.5 Volt battery into that space, might that eliminate the problem? Just asking.
 
Last edited:

danny.gonzalez.0861@gmai

Well-known member
Thank you so much! Your organization here is terrific! No misinformation, just solid stuff.

Thanks again!

BTW, is it perhaps possible that the PRAM battery, i.e., 4.5V battery that's in its own compartment on the back of the Mac Plus, is it perhaps possible that removal of that battery previously (along with some small green pitting from a prior battery leak) is what's causing the slow reboot, i.e., if I were to use solvent to unpit the battery compartment leads and insert a new 4.5 Volt battery into that space, might that eliminate the problem? Just asking.
Hello Butch,

I do not believe that would be the cause. The PRAM battery assists in holding some basic information like clock data and boot device but once the MAC is running, it will not change those settings as the chips are powered up. If completely powering off and unplugging for a bit, then yes those settings will be lost but again, that should not cause slow booting as the only things that have changed is time and boot order among a few others like mouse speed and volume level to name a few.

Cold boots usually take longer than reboots as the 68k processor does an initial RAM check, the more RAM installed the longer the boot up but that also does not happen on Reboot, only from a cold start. My IIci with 128MB of RAM takes closed to 2 min. to boot up because it must check all that memory on a cold boot, once started, a reboot will skip that check. I later bypassed the ROM with a ROMINATOR which also skips the RAM check for faster bootup.

Hope this clears up the question a bit.

P.s. I don't have a MAC Plus but I do have its newer sibling the MAC SE FDHD and I've ran them with no PRAM w/o issue. I am almost certain your PLUS will work the same way.

Thanks!
 

wskjinfen

Member
Hi, I'm new to 68kMLA and I'm working on repairing my very first Mac Plus. I have three questions and would appreciate any help any of you can provide. Thanks in advance!!!

1. The Mac Plus screen, once fully booted is very slightly shifted to the left. You can see the entire desktop, but the black outline around it is a little thinner on the left then it is on the right. What's wrong, if anything, and what do I do to realign so its even on both sides?

2. When I cold start the machine, it boots up very quickly, but when I reboot, the startup is excruciatingly slow. I just finished installing 4 1MB Simms and the machine responded positively to the upgrade, but that didn't change the slow boot on a reboot. What's up and how do I fix it?

3. Lastly, how do I diagnose and fix an internal floppy drive that will accept and read from a floppy disk, but won't eject, either upon reboot or shutdown or even when I'm trying to swap disks?

If anyone can provide answers to one or even all of these questions, I'd be very, very grateful.

Thanks very much to all for all your help.
1. The Mac Plus screen, once fully booted is very slightly shifted to the left. You can see the entire desktop, but the black outline around it is a little thinner on the left then it is on the right. What's wrong, if anything, and what do I do to realign so its even on both sides?
——The capacitors of the horizontal scanning circuit on the analog board are aging. It is recommended to replace them all.

2. When I cold start the machine, it boots up very quickly, but when I reboot, the startup is excruciatingly slow. I just finished installing 4 1MB Simms and the machine responded positively to the upgrade, but that didn't change the slow boot on a reboot. What's up and how do I fix it?
——It is very likely that the capacitors on the logic board have aged, which will cause the reset signal to always be valid. It is recommended to replace all of them. These capacitors often cause other problems, such as extremely low speaker sound, etc.

3. Lastly, how do I diagnose and fix an internal floppy drive that will accept and read from a floppy disk, but won't eject, either upon reboot or shutdown or even when I'm trying to swap disks?
——The gear on the main shaft of the push plate motor is old and broken. It is recommended to buy a new gear or 3D print it. Please refer to
&

PS:
The above faults are common issues with this computer, indicating that your computer has not been repaired and is aging. Also, please pay attention to the issue of broken solder joints on the simulation board, which will cause the computer screen to go black. Suggest watching more repair videos.
(The above content uses Google Translate. For non-native English speakers, please forgive any unclear or ambiguous expressions.)
 
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butch

Active member
Okay folks:

This is my first attempt to diagnose and repair (if necessary, but only if necessary) any apparent defective (or soon likely to become defective or fail) parts on a Mac Plus original analog board.

Right now, the analog board is working (it's powering and providing signal to) a Mac Plus (1988) that I purchase for $200 ($100 plus $100 shipping) that originally had a Sad Mac ROM failure black screen.
I put in new ROMs, upgraded the logic board to 4 MB and the sad Mac turned very happy and booted beautifully. The logic board is in near pristine condition, and other than the defective ROMS which have now bee replaced and the board upgraded to 4 MB, everything runs smoothly and without any hiccups.

The screen is perfect, no pixel failures or fade lines or other problems and the only tiny weeny issue is a barely imperceptible difference in the width between the left black margin and the right black margin.

The other issue is that the internal floppy drive, which works beautifully and accepts disks and reads them faithfully, is reluctant to let go of disk when we attempt to eject the disk and needs to be prodded with a push pin. That's in the process of being fixed and we're sure that a fully functional drive will be fully repaired in short order. No worries there whatsoever.

However, what we could really use some help with is the analog board. While the analog board is fine and both powers and provides signal to the Mac Plus at the present time, we see that its the original analog board and doesn't appear to be in quite a near perfect condition as the logic board. While is is fully functional, we're worried that, perhaps, just perhaps, one or more capacitors may be nearing its end of life and need to be replaced and repaired.

We've provided a bunch of pictures to give you a better idea of what condition its currently in. Would it be too much to ask you folks to take a look and let us know if you see things wrong with the board that needs repairing before we attempt to sell the re-assembled Mac Plus to some poor, unsuspecting buyer. We always want our customers to be happy and never want them to be sad with any purchase they make from us. That's why we call ourselves the HappyMacs Restorations group.

Thank you for taking a look and pointing out anything you observe that may need attention.

Sincerely,

HappyMacs Restorations.
 

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