Macintosh Portables

[CelGen]

Was visiting a friend in the Seattle area and one of his friends sent me home with two machines. (plus the TK50 drive hiding underneath that MicroVAX 2000)

Neither on a quick inspection seem to be the backlit models.

The one on the floor is a little rough. Pretty filthy and slightly yellowed. The faceplate for the floppy drive was cracked and several other clips or standoffs were broken or cracked, notably the right side hinge assembly was splitting. The main battery and its cover were missing and one of the screen latches likes to not release.

The other one was a lot cleaner and had a surprise on the back.

It had the battery, the battery cover, the modem and a 4mb RAM card installed. :O

I've only dug into the more beat up one so far for cleaning and decapping. While there's signs the main battery had leaked the logic board seems to of aged rather well from the battery and the capacitors. A little bit of crustyness that washed off with a toothbrush and only one bad via. It should be repairable.

Neither machine however had a good hard drive. Not only had their gaskets failed (they are Connors, go figure) but the previous owner had removed the lid screws. I'll likely install replacement drives instead of more Connors. Does anyone have that fancy pinout you can use to build your own mac portable to SCSI + power cable?

The one with a ram card should run System 6.0.8 fine. Not sure about the other, assuming both can be repaired, as it will only have a meg of ram. I should have another modem card and the proper white power brick in storage. I don't recall trading those away.

 

[just.in.time]

I believe they also have 1mb RAM soldered in. If you can find a working hard drive, you should be good to run 7.0.1/7.1 with plenty of memory left over on 5mb RAM. Nice conquest

 

[CelGen]

Yep, this has four banks of 256kb SRAM. Damn this must of been expensive new.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I should be able to diig it up, I developed the first rev. Dunno if uni had to fix anything. The original concept was to put a PCB converting ISD cable connector to ISD/MOLEX connectors hidden between sled and drive for 3.5" drive replacements. ISTR keeping the old drive shell and cable in place on the sled to be used as a stealth 2.5" replacement drive chassis was the direction I was taking it.

I love uni's work, but that cable conversion falls into the somewhat less than elegant solution category.

edit: congrats on the RAM config. that matches my NASA Portable.

 

[CelGen]

Opened up the second mac portable.

The retainers for both hinges are missing but otherwise the plastics inside are in better shape. Logic board was in excellent condition with very little cap leak damage. Both these boards are well on track for being recoverable.

Pulled my official white mac portable AC adapter in storage. 7.5v 1.5A. Ran it off a dummy load and voltage dip and AC ripple seemed to be fair.

Anyone able to verify what I'm reading about the specs for the original macintosh portable gel cell? I'm seeing 6.5v 5Ah.

 

[CelGen]

Through-hole caps on both boards are replaced.

I can see why so many people screw this part up so badly. The leads are bent over when soldered in so if you are not careful you desolder and pull the cap out and you take the via with it.