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Managed to ruin the ends of three traces while removing dead mask ROMs, only on the final chip. Everything was going smoothly until the last possible moment. At least the bodge wires will end up snugly pinned beneath the DIP socket, but it'll be weeks before I forgive myself for blemishing such a pretty logic board...
I'm beginning to think there is some ROM issue with my card. I was wondering if you happen to have an EPROM reader/writer? If so, would it be possible to read the data from your working cards ROM and post it here? What also would really help is a decent, well lit, 4k photo of the chip side of a working card. Who knows, maybe my card has a naughty chip in use on it.
Still some infrequent and minor twitching on my SE's video, so I took the final step* and recapped its ASTEC power supply. There was one small area that looked like cap ooze had been there. Now, the suspense begins.. either the video is now spot on, or after a long while it'll do it again. (* things like the flyback etc. are just out of my league, and the problem is too minor to risk those )
Gonna try dropping by tomorrow… not sure if they will have anything.

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jmacz
jmacz
Yup, Akihabara. Will be walking around half the day so will duck into any store that looks cool. Unfortunately won’t have time to head out of Tokyo. I don’t have a lot of room either so anything laptop size or smaller will work but no systems I think. Will mostly be browsing.

Got to spend time at Map Camera today in Shinjuku which was fun.
T
twelvetone12
If you like browsing more camera stuff, there is Camera Kitamura just behind the station in Akihabara, I got some nice Nikon lenses there. But I love just browsing around the electronic shops, I wish they still existed in my country!
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jmacz
jmacz
One Power Macintosh total across two stores in Akihabara. Also went by a U&J Mac’s but unfortunately it was closed. Was fun browsing all the stores though.
Bot Invasion!! Whoop whoop whoop!
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Snial
Snial
What's the point of all the bot stuff? Is it a denial-of-service or an AI trying to fool people into thinking this gibberish is real?
Powerbase
Powerbase
I suppose as long as one person falls far it, out of the tens of thousands, then that's payday for spammer/scammers.
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Snial
Snial
The ones we can see appear so bad they could be some kind of decade-old Zombie bots gone rogue.
My "new" IIci's soft power was stuck always signaling on, but I found the three micro-breaks in the relevant traces. Wish I'd spotted them during the board washing, but oh well. Humorously, both could've been fixed by simply bridging pins, but I wanted to make this look as elegant as I could, so as not to confuse any future owners.

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And in a completely predictable move as was prognosticated by everyone who knows me....the sickness is spreading :ROFLMAO:
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Boctor
Boctor
That Dell is exactly of my time. Nice matching peripherals for it, too!
ClassicGuyPhilly
ClassicGuyPhilly
Thanks! Great finds from the VCF East Swap Meet...been waiting to finish the tower off properly. ;)
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Successfully moved a 466Mhz 7400 CPU onto a G3 CPU card - harvested from a Digital Audio card that I obtained for peanuts. The cache chips are rated at 250MHz, so I guess this thing will easily do 500MHz.

The old 750L will go onto an iMac trayloader CPU card.
alectrona6400
alectrona6400
i wonder... whats your process to BGA soldering? i always struggle with it
croissantking
croissantking
croissantking
croissantking
-Preheat donor PCB, use hot air to remove chip
-Remove solder balls. Clean pads with braid/IPA
-Line up stencil, tape to chip. Mask unused holes
-Smear flux into holes
-fill holes w/ solder balls
-Heat chip w/ hot air @300C until balls melt to pads
-Remove stencil + clean chip
-Coat new PCB pads w/ flux
-Line up chip
-Preheat PCB + use hot air @300C to heat chip, should drop once soldered into place
I was born in 2001, but man I sure do love 1980s computers! I wish I could go back in time for just a little while and see these machines in their heyday. :cool: IMG_1732.jpeg
For a few days there, every Mac I own was up and running perfectly. Well, the Q605 still has some very faint digital noise ingress on audio, OK since that was a board with a lot of bad traces. But today the IIcx that had one corrupted ROM stopped chiming. Still boots with a ROM SIMM. Debugging..
Finally got the WiFi Dayna port emulation setup on my external BlueSCSI with my Mac SE so I can now browse the web! It decently fast too thanks to the MacEffects accelerator I have in here! This is the SE setup I always dreamed of, and it's now possible at a very reasonable price thanks to these wonderful new products for these machines. :)IMG_1707.jpg
Y
ymk
You can have a 486 system with a Pentium in it though.
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Boctor
Boctor
I want to enter "386 enchanted mode."
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PB145B
PB145B
With an Overdrive chip, I suppose that does technically count as a 486 with a Pentium, but that’s still kind of a confusing way to word it.

“386 Enchanted mode” is a good one. I was absolutely ecstatic when I found this “computer stupidities” page, some of this stuff left me almost hurting I was laughing so hard! And the fact that it will load on old computers makes it even more awesome!
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Boom! My first prototype of a 68030 accelerator board (based on Bolle's Micromac Performer clone) for the 512K is alive! 🎉 The Performer drivers (Dove) are finally playing nice with the SCSI interface, and I couldn't be happier. Next step: Figuring out what's needed to add some external cache to this little beast!
B
Builder68
I intend to integrate the SCSI interface onto the accelerator board, so all inputs except OVERLAY are already present.

It still won't completely cover the original logic board. Guess it's feeling a bit shy! 😉

Maybe if I figure out how to add some cache, I could finally cover that bashful left inferior corner of the board!
Joopmac
Joopmac
Awesome. A QFP version would be nice perhaps, nice and low to slide in?
PB145B
PB145B
WHAT!? That is INSANE! Great work. I love seeing newly-made accelerators for pre-SE/30 compacts.
Got some OPTi chips for future Personality card mods. The plastic wrap on these Chinese imports always smells of citrus.

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croissantking
croissantking
@zigzagjoe I thought remarking usually is to disguise a lower speed grade as a faster one, or one with fewer features as having more - not relevant for this USB controller?
If the chips work, and identify as 82c861, then would it matter if they were remarked?
zigzagjoe
zigzagjoe
I'm given to understand it is more often cosmetics. Customers want new looking part not scratched up salvaged parts rather than malicious intent.

For these I concur if it functions correctly then it's not really a huge concern, just good to know.
croissantking
croissantking
Hosiden - "Causing Mac users pain and suffering since 1987."IMG_1691.jpg
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PB145B
PB145B
Hah, yeah this is the fan from my main SE, which is an early 1987 unit. I switched it out last year for a Pico Ace fan from a later SE which is much quieter and doesn’t cause screen jitter like this one did. I find it so funny because this fan is made by Hosiden, the same company that made the mono active matrix PowerBook LCDs that also proved quite troublesome with age.
PB145B
PB145B
Can’t put everything I want to say in one comment… but yes I agree they are fun pieces of history, I just wanted my main SE to have a quieter fan. I will probably put this one into my secondary SE, which is also an early 1987 model, because it’s in better shape than the one currently in that machine.
3lectr1cPPC
3lectr1cPPC
I’d like those squirrel cage fans a lot better if there was an actual squirrel running around inside of them.
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