Oh. Great. Another IIsi...

[jessenator]

Do I have a problem? (don't we all?)

So I asked a buddy of mine in Denver to pick up a IIsi off a craigslist posting. This seller also had a Q700 and an SE/30 he hasn't listed yet... they both tempted me, but for some reason I was drawn to the IIsi ...again.  The seller, was again, relative of the original owner and was simply putting these machines up for sale. He had them tested at Apple Rescue of Denver, and they were "working." My buddy went to go pick it up and it wouldn't boot at all. Thank goodness for instant communication: we negotiated the price and my friend immediately went home, packed it, and shipped it  8-o  good friend. Also, it was packed like a Faberge egg...

Got it this evening and like before, it wouldn't boot. Took out the PSU and found this wonderful scene:

So, yeah, of course it wasn't going to boot. I have yet to look inside... I took a substantial risk, but plopped in the re-capped PSU from my now departed IIsi, and BAM! It booted!

Interesting machine setup. I think it was a proto-Splash print station of some kind. Many drawing, CAD, and other apps right on the desktop. (apologies for the intense moire...)

It was pretty zippy compared to my last IIsi as well. But only 17MB of RAM... curious  

Oh, wait, what's this? An Ethernet card?

Oh ...oh....

OH

I'm being a cheeky SOB, I knew it had something, so I had to nab it. And the best part is that I spent less on this than I did on the first one. All in all, I'm pretty dang happy  

 

[Zippy Zapp]

Very Cool.  Nice upgrade for that machine too.  I always liked the IIsi since it was a unique form factor for that machine only. 

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Amazing! :approve:

 

[jessenator]

I saw "accelerator" in the listing and thought-- ok it's either a PowerCache, a DiiMO, a Turbo 040, or a Turbo 601. I got more excited when the seller said his dad liked souping up Macs. The dad used to work for Motorola I've come to find out.
I'm pretty shocked at how fast it is. I mean, everyone says the 040 card puts it on par with a quadra... not kidding, they were.

I'm not doing a single thing to this component wise. I don't trust myself. Is there anyone here that does re-capping and isn't (according to threads I've found) dodgy?

 

[superjer2000]

What is in the PSU connector?  Mold?  Dirt?  Burnt connector?

 

[jessenator]

What is in the PSU connector?  Mold?  Dirt?  Burnt connector?

It looked burnt to be. In going to take a closer look tomorrow. My buddy told me when they tried powering it up when cash was about to change hands, he heard the PSU "click" but it may have been a pop...

Had the system running for a while tonight copying files from internal to an external SCSI HDD. No problems other than my years old copy of system 7 not letting me write Install 1 because of a checksum error...

I'm going to use the system disks that came with my first IIsi and then update to 7.5.3 so I can finally format my SCSI2SD card and have relatively quiet vintage Mac dabblings

The only other issues I forgot to mention so far have been the new PRAM battery not saving parameters after unplugging from the wall and no sound, apparently. Don't know if it's 040 related or what. It maybe the battery is bad ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Could be board leakage, but I haven't seen anything at all from around the caps, anyway. Eraser'ed the speaker contacts, but still no sound. I might try a boot without the PDS additions and add them one at a time. Maybe test the Ethernet card with my other riser (but not the Daystar card... That would be bad).

A little more about the system. The previous owner might not have been the original, but I think he was. He worked for Motorola and traveled quite a bit for his job. This machine was indeed a print station, loaded up with CAD and other drawing software. Some interesting documents, to say the least. Last one was made in 1996, the earliest made before this system in 1988.

I definitely want to upgrade to 32-64MB and give the 040 a workout in illustrator—actually see if I can use it for a day of work! I want to stay up and get the system reinstalled back to stock and work up from there, but it's already midnight...

I tried installing 7.5.3 and ran into some extension/control panel conflicts from the 7.1 install and didn't want to bother too long sussing that out.. For some reason I couldn't choose to do a clean install :/ so I'll have to start at 7.x and see. My external has only 6.0.8 and of course the SMIs won't run, and with the corrupt 7.0.1 image, I have to break out my OEM disks.

 

[ArmorAlley]

Moral of the story: if you want to improve your SE/30, collect IIsis.

Congratulations on your find. It really is a good feeling to get a machine that was loved and used.

The IIsi is a great little machine. We had one with 5MB that drove a large dual-page B&W monitor that we used for the Students' Union newspaper when I was in university.

 

[Bolle]

No sound is definetly caps (and maybe something else that got damaged by cap goo - sound section is prone to fail in the IIsi)

Cap goo dries up after time depending how the machine was stored, so you don't necessarily have to see anything but they are still bad.

 

[AlpineRaven]

whoop whoop!!! Good find buddy!!! Wonders what that Quadra 700 wouldve had!

Recap it buddy including the PSU as well

Cheers

AP

 

[EvilCapitalist]

Wow, that's certainly a very nice conquest!  If this is what the original owner did to a IIsi you really have to wonder what lurks under the Q700's hood...to say nothing of the SE/30.

 

[jessenator]

Thanks, all!

I'm pretty terrified of attempting the caps again on this one...  know attempted more than just that on my last motherboard, but I really don't want to mess up another one :/ does anyone on here do recaps?

Thanks for the sound explanation. Any idea about the battery not storing? I guess I could check the voltage first...

https://denver.craigslist.org/sys/d/denver-vintage-macintosh-computers/6803841423.html

So that's the listing I posted in the Craigslist finds thread. Everything (not really in detail) was on those yellow pieces of legal pad. The iisi had "accelerator" on it. Looks like there's a better HDD on the Quadra. Who knows. Maybe there's more in there he didn't jot down. I was tempted by the SE/30 momentarily, but that prize hiding under the IIsi was too powerful, even though I didn't know what it was at the time.

 

[jessenator]

So System 7.0.1 + tuneup was fine. Installed the Daystar cdev and it was fine. Upped to 7.5.3 and initial boot after install was perfectly fine. Copied afterDark files from my external SCSI and I got a bomb on reboot— error 10 / bus error. Tried to disable extensions on reboot and still got the bus error bomb. I'm wondering if I've got similar problems described here:



No screen artefacting thankfully. At work now, but later today I'll probably pull the ethernet card first and work my way back. Ethernet is pretty low on my ultimate 68k mac list, so it won't bother me if it has to go.

I also have that new GGLabs ROM and I wonder if installing that would solve anything going on here. But then that's got me wondering: does the installer hack described by Gamba (waybackmachine link) and BMOW described need to be applied to the GGLabs ROM if I install it? Or would this addition just be complicating matters?

 

[olePigeon]

Hah.  I had the auction on my watch, but I forgot about it.  Congrats.

 

[OleLila]

Jinnai recapped my IIsi...it works and looks great.