ThisAwesomeCOLA
New member
Hello everyone, so a while back I went crazy at Japanese auctions and bought a lot of cheap Macs and upgrades which were not so cheap after shipping.
Among these were a Pioneer MPC-LX200 which was just labeled as Junk, I also managed to score a matching keyboard.
So 9 months later it arrived alongside a Color classic, being a rather sorry state with a loose top cover, and a front bezel loosely hanging on the audio knobs, It was missing a hard drive and had a Apple CD300i Cd drive.
I was going to work for a couple of weeks and did not really have time, until yesterday, when I suddenly pulled out all my broken Macs to fix after having a rather easy time with a 4400/200.
When I tried went to power on the Pioneer, I was expecting to use a converter because of the only 100-120V label on the back, but I decided to see inside first (Not very hard when the cover just lifts up).
Looking at the PSU, it supported 100-240V, I thought that was rather odd, and decided to try without a converter.
And lo and behold it not only booted but even chimed on the second try, eventually I got a picture also, along with a missing disk icon, so I decided to dig deeper.
Taking a look at the Motherboard, Which I soon discovered was from a 6500/250, I realized this had been modified to take a Gazelle motherboard, which is the only upgrade path this Pioneer can take, and also enables it to receive a G3 upgrade.
It had 64MB of RAM installed, along with a Apple ethernet card, Focus Video out card, and a Apple Video in Card.
The connector to the motherboard is broken away from the case, so it requires some assistance to connect the motherboard again.
I continued attempting to getting it to boot, connecting an IDE HDD to the connectors by the PSU, and also replacing the CD drive, as it could not close properly, and would not read discs.
I Went through all my broken G3 desktops and salvaged Hard drives, with no success.
Eventuallty I found a Apple CD 300 plus drive from a broken 7100, which did not want to read my burned OS 8.1 installer, but did read a original Os 8 install CD, I guess it does not like CD-Rs?
It booted, and allowed me to check the RAM,and I hoped I could use a 5gb disk on module I had ordered, but it failed to recognize it, actually all my Macs refused to acknowledge it, except my G4 DA which freezes when it tries to collect data from it.
I even tried the hard drive which was confirmed working in my 4400, to no avail.
128MB form the 7500 mentioned earlier was scavenged, and I also installed a TV tuner card from Apple, along with a PCI firewire card.
It now chimes beautifully but I will not get a picture, only flickering when powering up.
I was hoping to test the speakers, but it was not to be.
A bit of a long post, but I stayed up all night doing this because I was so excited.
I am hoping to get it fully functional in the future, and perhaps also install a graphics card and a 400mhz+ G3 L2 cache upgrade.
If anyone has one, I have a bunch CPU upgrades I can trade
Any suggestions would be helpful, there does not seem to be very much English documentation on these.
Among these were a Pioneer MPC-LX200 which was just labeled as Junk, I also managed to score a matching keyboard.
So 9 months later it arrived alongside a Color classic, being a rather sorry state with a loose top cover, and a front bezel loosely hanging on the audio knobs, It was missing a hard drive and had a Apple CD300i Cd drive.
I was going to work for a couple of weeks and did not really have time, until yesterday, when I suddenly pulled out all my broken Macs to fix after having a rather easy time with a 4400/200.
When I tried went to power on the Pioneer, I was expecting to use a converter because of the only 100-120V label on the back, but I decided to see inside first (Not very hard when the cover just lifts up).
Looking at the PSU, it supported 100-240V, I thought that was rather odd, and decided to try without a converter.
And lo and behold it not only booted but even chimed on the second try, eventually I got a picture also, along with a missing disk icon, so I decided to dig deeper.
Taking a look at the Motherboard, Which I soon discovered was from a 6500/250, I realized this had been modified to take a Gazelle motherboard, which is the only upgrade path this Pioneer can take, and also enables it to receive a G3 upgrade.
It had 64MB of RAM installed, along with a Apple ethernet card, Focus Video out card, and a Apple Video in Card.
The connector to the motherboard is broken away from the case, so it requires some assistance to connect the motherboard again.
I continued attempting to getting it to boot, connecting an IDE HDD to the connectors by the PSU, and also replacing the CD drive, as it could not close properly, and would not read discs.
I Went through all my broken G3 desktops and salvaged Hard drives, with no success.
Eventuallty I found a Apple CD 300 plus drive from a broken 7100, which did not want to read my burned OS 8.1 installer, but did read a original Os 8 install CD, I guess it does not like CD-Rs?
It booted, and allowed me to check the RAM,and I hoped I could use a 5gb disk on module I had ordered, but it failed to recognize it, actually all my Macs refused to acknowledge it, except my G4 DA which freezes when it tries to collect data from it.
I even tried the hard drive which was confirmed working in my 4400, to no avail.
128MB form the 7500 mentioned earlier was scavenged, and I also installed a TV tuner card from Apple, along with a PCI firewire card.
It now chimes beautifully but I will not get a picture, only flickering when powering up.
I was hoping to test the speakers, but it was not to be.
A bit of a long post, but I stayed up all night doing this because I was so excited.
I am hoping to get it fully functional in the future, and perhaps also install a graphics card and a 400mhz+ G3 L2 cache upgrade.
If anyone has one, I have a bunch CPU upgrades I can trade
Any suggestions would be helpful, there does not seem to be very much English documentation on these.