• 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.

Things Paulie bought that he didn't really need

Paulie

Well-known member
Starting a generic thread because I have a feeling it's going to grow.

Time for the first entry in 'tales from Paulie's living room floor'.

So it was a productive weekend in terms of beige Macintosh acquisition. After losing out on a decently spec'd but overpriced LC475 on eBay due to the seller refusing to actually let me have it for the winning bid (that's a story in and of itself), I decided to reinvest the money in something else. Not very long later I found a Power Macintosh G3 (of the beige variety) a reasonable distance away. Three hours later; I had it in my possession.

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Condition wise; it's in excellent condition considering it's age. According to the label on the back, it started life as a G3/266, but thanks to a Sonnet thingy it's now a 366. Which is nice. Got 512MB RAM, which in theory could go to 768MB if I was determined enough. Has a non-original 80GB Seagate IDE HDD, Apple IDE CD-ROM, floppy (which works, amazingly), and a Zip drive which I haven't tested yet due to lack of disks.

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I've chucked 9.2.2 on it, seems appropriate for the age and spec. Technically it could handle OSX, but I think it would start to struggle.

Here it is running. 

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That was Saturday. On Sunday, I had a visit from joshc, who had sold me his 8200/120 that needs some help.

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For the uninitiated, the 8200 is basically a 8100 in a tower case, that wasn't sold in North America. This particular one has seen a little too much time near the sun, and has what I'm calling Plastic Leprosy. Anything plastic is very brittle, and Josh supplied me with a bag of plastic parts that have already fallen off. 

The reason I have it is that the PSU is toast (literally, see Josh's thread), and Josh has too many other projects on the go to give this one the love and attention it deserves. Originally I was considering building some sort of ATX swap arrangement for it; but luckily I found a PSU (from a 9500 which appears to use the same one) on eBay, so have snapped that up and waiting for it to arrive. Honestly it's unknown if this thing even works, but if it does, I'll tidy it up (including gluing some of the plastic bits back together), and I think 8.6 would be appropriate. Still not ruling out engineering a ATX adaptor for it, though, especially since I have the dead PSU to harvest the wires/connectors from.

Check out the size of this PSU. Absolute chonker.

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Franklinstein

Well-known member
Good catch. The 8200 is one of the few Power Macs I still need for a complete collection. Sadly the only one I have seen in person was in rough shape like yours and I didn't realize they were basically Euro-only models and so difficult to find, so I didn't buy it. Oops. Not that anyone is missing much by the fact that they weren't sold in the States: as you notice, it's just a 7200 board in a terrible tower case. I have seen very few of the Q800-style cases with their CDROM bezels still attached and power buttons intact. Maybe we could ask @maceffects to mold us some new ones.

 

Paulie

Well-known member
I have seen very few of the Q800-style cases with their CDROM bezels still attached and power buttons intact.
I do have the power button and the CDROM bezel, except they require some attention from some glue. I'll put it all back together properly if the machine turns out to work.

 

Unknown_K

Well-known member
I had to replace my 8500 case over 15 years ago because of brittle plastic (especially the power button), the replacement still works but I rarely use it.

The Beige G3 MT along with the 8600 and 9600's are great cases and mine at least don't seen to fall apart like the 8500/9500 do.

 

Paulie

Well-known member
And now for something I really didn't need and spent too much money on.

SE/30 in 'extra mature' yellow. 4MB RAM, 20MB HDD (working!), currently running 6.0.8 but that'll change. It's a little 'used' cosmetically but nothing above some light scrapes and general yellowing. The seller claims it's been recapped too, so I can't complain too much.

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I've rather overspent on the vintage Macs this month so I won't be doing anything particularly drastic to it for now. Next month, however, I'll up the RAM to 32MB and get looking for an A/UX-compatible network card.

 

Paulie

Well-known member
I can't help myself sometimes. Met @Damian Ward today (lovely chap) and came away with a rare Workgroup Server 8550 (effectively a 8500 with the AV stuff removed) that needs a bit of work, and a Quicksilver G4 (733MHz). Unfortunately life means I won't be able to get around to the 8550 for a few weeks, but I've got the G4 fired up and it is excellent.

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Damian Ward

Well-known member
Good to meet you Paul. I'm pleased you liked the bits you got from me.  Let me know if you think of any that you need. 

 

Paulie

Well-known member
Woo I haven't kept this thread updated. But as to not bore anyone with a long list of things that have come and gone in the meantime, I'll continue from now.

Whilst we were in the Dark Times (i.e. last weekend), I was put in touch (thanks @Scott Squires for the hookup) with an older guy who had a Quadra 700 that he wanted to go to a good home. The only down side (and what probably stopped a lot of people going to get it) is that it was in very north Wales, which is quite the drive no matter where you are in the country. But as I a) wanted a Q700, and this one was definitely the right price, b) don't mind doing a 9 hour round trip, and c) was bored, I took up the challenge.

And here it is. Apart from being a little 'aged and loved', there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Everything works as it should. Came with 20MB RAM, but I've got a 64MB kit on order as that's the correct amount in any Quadra. Not planning on doing anything too mad to this one for the time being, it stands on it's own merits.

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joshc

Well-known member
I'm glad I passed on this, it wasn't right that Mr. 040 was missing a Q700 from his collection. Great score.
 

Paulie

Well-known member
Have been tempted to ignore my own declaration and post the story of my Classic II, named 'Sole Survivor' (yes, that is a Fallout reference). At least then I can link people on IRC to this post and not having to repeat myself.

The tale begins about a month or so ago, when I was arranging collection for a 2PD for someone else. The seller sends me a message which raises my eyebrows. Copy/pasted directly from my eBay messages:
I don't suppose you'd be interested in taking away 4 or 5 battered mac classics, or possibly SE's would you? Its a long story, but about a decade ago i bought the entire contents of a local college's late 90's computer department for virtually nothing, and ended up with about 30 mac classics and SE's. I think they had been stored in a somewhat damp room as some of them really weren't in the best condition.
And this is how I ended up with four Classics and two Classic IIs, for the princely sum of nothing.

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Now clearly, as you can see, these are not in the best condition. Also, you won't be able to tell that they're leaking rust, dirt, and various fluids out of them. Plus, the smell of rot was horrible, I drove back home with the windows down.

Once home, I started pulling them apart. The insides were just as much of a horror show as you'd expect. People with sensitive dispositions (and are triggered by horrendous battery bombs and chassis so corroded that they literally fell apart in my hand) should look away now.

(Click to embiggen if you want to see the full horror)
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All four Classics were toast, and one of the Classic IIs. I spent a lot of time vacuuming up rust. These were summarily stripped down, the metal chassis disposed of, and the logic boards and analogue boards (also in terrible shape) were passed on to @joshc for harvesting/recycling.

So, after all the carnage, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the Classic IIs hadn't suffered the same fate as the rest of the machines. Sure, both the analogue board and logic boards were both covered in substantial cap goo, but the battery hadn't exploded, meaning that in theory, they were serviceable.

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At this point, the entire machine went off to see @joshc who wanted to have a crack at seeing if the logic board could be repaired. According to him (I hope I've got this right), other than a recap, one of the CPU legs needed to be repaired too, but that was the extent of the damage. Tested and working.

The analogue board also got recapped, but it apparently had suffered a worse fate and wasn't playing nice. As I didn't want to take advantage of the kindness and time that Josh had put into this so far, I went searching and found a shiny NOS Classic analogue board from a local supplier at a very reasonable price.

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As the Classic II CRT yoke has a different sized connector to the Classic analogue board, we saved some time by swapping in one of the CRTs from the dead Classics instead, saved having to swap the yoke over and mess around with alignment. Luckily I appear to have chosen a good one, the picture is really sharp and can be super-bright.

(Also I fitted a Noctua into the rusty chassis as the original fan had completely seized bearings. Because who doesn't want to see a nice fan in a battered machine?)

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With the new bits in, put it together and it's now a working Classic II. The case is still in horrible condition, even after a good scrub in the bath, which removed a couple of ancient electrical safety stickers and now gives an amusing contrast between how aged the plastic has gotten. I'm purposely leaving it this way as this machine has a story and has clearly lived a life, and it wouldn't be sympathetic to the machine to try to improve it. It's fitted with the (max) 10MB of RAM and a BlueSCSI thing, and works perfectly now.

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And thus ends the tale of the Sole Survivor, the single machine out of the six I'd collected to continue living.
 

Paulie

Well-known member
My Quadra 700 was missing it's feet, so decided to not mess around and see if I could find some and just get a load 3D-printed instead. Enormous thanks to @jessenator for coming up with the model in the first place and tweaking it again for me to perfection.

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Paulie

Well-known member
A couple of machines have showed up in the last couple of weeks due to being on eBay for very reasonable prices.

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First up the Quadra 650, a machine I personally consider incredibly underrated and perhaps the best Quadra, all things considered. This one came with a Formac ProLegend GA graphics card and some sort of ethernet card fitted. I'll reuse the Formac in my Quadra 700 as this 650 was clearly well specced with 104MB (36+36+16+16, strange number) RAM and maxed out VRAM, so it doesn't need any external help. Grubbiness aside, this thing's in decent condition, the only plastic trauma being the PSU holder thing which snapped twice and has since been glued back together. Working PSU too which is always a bonus. The biggest shock was finding the original Maxell still installed, which luckily hadn't decided to leak. That was swiftly removed. No real plans for this one yet, but it's fully working so I'll find something for it to do.

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Next up is the Quadra 610 that I didn't particularly want but @joshc, who is a terrible influence, talked me into it. Luckily it stayed very cheap so I don't feel like I've wasted money. I was a little suspicious about this one because the eBay photos covered up the battery so there could be a world of pain there, but luckily everything was fine. Whilst it's definitely 'aged' in colour, all the plastics are fine which is strange for one of these, they've usually started to crumble by now. It does need a recap, so that'll be the first job for it. Again, yet to figure out what I'd use it for, but I've stolen the 16MB RAM from the Q650 above for this one so it now has a 'useful' amount.

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Nathan_A

Well-known member
Agreed on the Quadra 650. Great machine. That's a very cool Formac card! Any idea what the graphics chip is under that heatsink? Also, interesting that it takes a SIMM.
 

joshc

Well-known member
but @joshc, who is a terrible influence, talked me into it.
I'm glad to be of service. :D

These both look really great to be honest, and I absolutely love that you are ending up with a pretty comprehensive Quadra collection at this rate. 840AV next?? ;)
 
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