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Nice find with the Aldus machine! Love the maxed-out build.  If you left any electrolytics un-replaced, try that first to help fix the soft power. Even if they are not leaking they are near-certain to be no longer performing to spec. 

Following up slightly on the electrolytic vs tantalum debate as I was researching around a bit more ahead of another DigiKey order for my own recap projects.  It's funny. In Mac-land folks often want to replace their electrolytics with tantalums as they want to avoid dealing with cap goo...

Nice - what a practical idea!

Very nice find! Looks like you got the secret speed-bumped model produced in the final months. It's like the LCIII+ of G4 Minis. In addition to the fastest CPU on a PPC mini, this one also came with a faster HDD, double the VRAM (64 vs 32), and a faster SuperDrive (if configured with one) vs the...

Reading this entire thread is what sold me on push & twist: Try to find some junk boards with similar SMD caps to practice the whole process on, including cleaning the pads and soldering on the new ones. I was able to find some in an old cable modem and dead HDD controller in my junk bin. 

Thanks, this makes sense and paints the 'midpoint' decision as logical, being a general date structure vs simply for system clock and filesystem timestamps.  Unix time is signed so the unix epoch is functionally a midpoint as well. (Not sure about the Toolbox's internal representation.)

Ugh. Yes, been there, felt that pain. One less in the world... That is just egregious, and referencing the "when I bought it" price is such an eyeroll-inducing move.  I've become a "super high maintenance buyer" who asks sellers how they are going to be packaging whenever I think there's a...

Thanks for putting those helpful resources together :) Fix is working reliably for a few days now.  Eventually I think I'll want to make this board repair a bit nicer for the long-run - get a replacement resistor pack, redo the pad and trace, a nicer reflow on the IWM. But for now I'm just...

I've wondered about this too. With such constraints on space, why allow dates back to 1920? It seems like they had picked the present day as the approx midpoint of the range rather than the start. The 1970 unix epoch makes a heck of a lot more sense. 

Try adding some fresh solder and a bit of flux when heating it up for removal. Braid may also prove helpful. 

For what it's worth, this guy is in Ireland and appears to be active and receiving positive reviews:  https://vintagerecapeurope.wixsite.com/vintagerecapeurope/recapping

I enjoyed reading Scott Baret's thoughtful response.  As for the repair you are looking at. There are newly made replacement gears available at reasonable cost. There are models for 3d printers, and molded gears sold by eBay sellers and the like. 

Following off of what Unknown_K is saying - practicing on a junk board is highly recommended before touching something valuable and vintage. I was able to dig up an ancient cable modem that had a handful of SMD caps inside prior to attempting my first recap. Soldered a bunch of good new caps on...

I tried out a fancy-pants 27" 4K HDR10 LCD once and it had a fan in it. An LCD with active cooling! I was slightly astonished. 

WarCraft II runs on 68k, if you have a very fast 68k ;)   Pararena (the 2.0 version) has head-to-head network support and should run fine on a portable.  Spectre and bolo were already mentioned, but I have to plug them, both are top notch. As young kids we used to play bolo as if it were...

It's perhaps the thing of holy wars, or simple personal preference, but here's some advantages I can see: - Circuits were likely designed with electrolytics in mind. Tantalums have some different properties.  - Electrolytics tend to fail open, not short, as proven by time and history. Cap goo...

That wasn't _quite_ it but it certainly led me down the path - thank you.  We have victory! First recap quickly became first IC remove-and-reflow and finally the hacky (but working) fix you see in front of you: Sequence of events:  - Retinned RP1 and a variety of other things to no avail...

I did get a disk copy program running via 3.5" ProDOS. This is what I get reading from a 5.25" drive with a disk inserted. Error on every read. The Red LED lights up on the drive, and every 8 blocks it makes a small noise.  Video shows the behavior and the drive noise; apologies for the...

Good call - I could just make out some unwashed goo/corrosion underneath the PDS slot near the cap. Hard to reach, but I poured in some vinegar, and also ran it through the dishwasher with detergent. Re-tinned the PDS pins with flux and a mini dab of new solder each.  Haven't broken it worse...

I know you mentioned you cleaned the head - but that's what I was going to suggest. How much cleaning have you attempted? The 'cursed floppy' is perhaps quite dirty, or the media is disintegrating. Try both cleaning the head manually with 99% iso and doing a number of passes with a cleaning floppy.