Mac Plus

[bibilit]

You probably won't need to desolder really, just apply the iron and apply new solder at the same time, new and old will melt producing a shiny result.

You can also remove the old solder if required, but this can be tricky.

Don't forget to leave the two halves of the connector on, to avoid distortion.

 

[sirwiggum]

I resoldered J1.

C1 looks like this:



Turned it on, same thing.

What happens is it makes the happy ding at startup, if I tap the side I can see the screen flicker trying to come on (and can often see the floppy ? icon), however when I tap it like this it makes a noise like a "dzzzt" or a cat-bell sounding noise.

Then eventually it gives up doing this, and tapping it further causes the machine to reboot itself (evident from the startup sound)

 

[sirwiggum]

OK so I went in and soldered the J4 connections, as per trag, Brooklyn and others, and the connector from the lower board.

Then powered it up.

Initially nothing, but no flickers and weird noises when tapping either.

Then I turned the brightness dial.....

Success 8-o :b&w:





Note that the black line is the refresh of the monitor, it is clear and perfect.

The floppy icon is a flashing question mark.

Next steps:

- Find a mouse

- Find some 400k media

- Find a SCSI zip drive

Thanks everyone! The Mac Plus has a new lease of life!

 

[bibilit]

Congratulations !! :beige:

Nice to see the Plus working again...was an easy fix after all.

 

[sirwiggum]

Thanks bibilit for your help.

Great to get it up and running, and after all these years, that's all that was wrong!

 

[Bunsen]

Excellent news comrade! Another Mac saved from the landfill

 

[sirwiggum]

Thanks Bunsen!

At the very least, a Mac Plus saved from becoming a MiniITX project!

I obtained it years ago from a car boot sale, a guy had a table full of them (would've been a real conquest!). This was around the time of the late 90s when schools, businesses etc. were replacing their Mac fleets with shiny new Win95/98 PCs. Not sure if they all had issues like the display on this. I didn't even think to ask about a mouse as I assumed I could pick an ADB one up easily....

I didn't know a lot about compact macs other than I had used Classics/SEs (and LCs) at school. The display didn't work, it had no mouse, and my 1.44mb mac disc wasn't compatible. It sat for a while and ended up in the attic around 2001 when I left for university. It stayed there until the other week.

(I also had a BBC Master Compact system up there. Didn't really have much interest in this, so recently sold it to an Acorn/BBC collector as spares/repair. He fixed it by scraping out the dead spider from the motherboard. A literal bug!)

I've ordered some 400k/800k software and blank discs, and am on the lookout for a mouse.

Then, I intend to find and hook up a SCSI zip drive as an external drive.

 

[RS232]

My recently purchased eBay Mac Plus had exactly the same problem. Turn on the Mac and blank screen until you give it a few gentle taps to get the display working. It would jitter especially when the floppy drive was in operation and a few taps were required to get the screen back. After 10 minutes it would be fine.

When I came across Sirwiggum's success, I thought I should give it a go. I hadn't touched a soldering iron for god knows how long... Most probably 20 years so was quite nervous doing this fix.

I was a bit lazy at first and just heated the old solder on J4... This made the jitteriness on the screen worse! So, I went out to the shops and purchased some new solder and carefully refreshed the J1 and J4 connections. I became confident and with the soldering iron and made the connections neat and clean.

When I switched the Mac on, I was really chuffed to see a perfect display with no jitters - even with the floppy operating. I'm really proud that my Mac Plus is working 100%. Thanks everyone!!!

 

[sirwiggum]

well I got my Plus disks, including a system 6.0 disk.

However, I can't do a lot as I haven't sourced a mouse yet.

Question though - Do shortcut keys work?

As in, I've booted from floppy, I'm in the finder, I thought the down key would've given the recycle bin focus? And I thought enter would've opened the focused item (the floppy icon)?

Do these shortcuts not work in system 6, the plus keyboard, or do you reckon my keyboard duff? (I haven't had a chance to test it).

Thanks!

 

[sirwiggum]

I used the mac classic 2 as reference, and was able to use CMD+O to open the disk, CMD+I to get info, CMD+E to eject the disk.

Still puzzled about the arrow keys though.