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croissantking
IMG_5420.jpeg

Found this photo from 2003. If I had only known about flux 😢
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Snial
Snial
Then that's very encouraging. My experience with soldering at school in the mid-1980s had led me to believe I couldn't solder at all until I forced myself to learn the basics over 2004-2005. Actually it was more like I'd lost confidence again between the mid 1990s and the mid 2000s.
obsolete
obsolete
When I was young and ignorant, I used plumbing flux, because it was all that was available locally. Oh, the corrosion...

@Snial I didn't think I was any good at soldering either, until I got access to good equipment and materials. Once I was using the good stuff, things I struggled with before became so easy, it felt like cheating. Still does sometimes.
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Pilgrim33
Pilgrim33
Great photo quality for 2003!
Boctor
Would it be wise to preemptively recap a PM7200 logic board ASAP? Nothing's gone bad yet. I'm unsure if this is as urgent as with the woefully leaky, late-80's SMT electrolytics, which seemed to go bad much sooner (and with more of a mess) than later-generation ones. I know the need for new caps is an eventuality, but it may be a while before I can break out the soldering tools again.
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J
joshc
yes, recap it
Boctor
Boctor
All right, thanks for confirming. I checked the values and counted up the caps (plus a couple extra if I goof one up) to put in an order with Digikey. This Mac won't risk rotting out.
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Boctor
Boctor
Still works, thankfully. I was afraid I'd crush the poor PPC601 while working! The HS doesn't even get warm before than the fan can pull air away from it, and the CPU lacks the discoloration/delamination you sometimes see in 6100/7100 boards. Seems like that rotated cooler design was a big improvement. I snuck in a surprise, too: A reflashed/resoldered SIL3112 SATA card, which it happily boots from.

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Callan
And so, the battle begins... This beast has parts... LOTS of parts.

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crazyben
crazyben
@Callan i am not to bad with soldering and don't mind the CPU pins. But i absolutely struggle with soldering U33 and U46 type chips. What is your go to method for soldering these chips?
Callan
Callan
My reply was too long, so I messaged @crazyben. For everyone else the short version is lots of flux. U33's plcc's pads are under the chip so I angle the board an inch or two to give me better access to the pads. Small hoof tip. If not enough heat from that a conical.
crazyben
crazyben
Thank you for the detailed explanation that is very helpful. I think my problem was the size of the iron tip.
S
I've lost count of the compact macs I've received with upper corners broken during transit.
jmacz
IMG_1135.JPG
I was supergluing a cracked corner of a case... the superglue was sitting on the case for about 30 secs when I wiped the excess glue off and noticed brightening. I made a test 'J' next to it, waited 30 secs, wiped it off... Hmm...
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jmacz
jmacz
I normally clean the area, fill it with JB Plastic Weld, let it fully cure/dry, and then use sandpaper (start with 120 grit, go to 240, then 400 <- I stop here as I don't want a gloss finish) to sand it to where it's completely even.
jmacz
jmacz
If the area was already smooth, that's the end of the filling process, but if the area had some texture, I'll try (keyword here being try) to recreate the texture by knicking it with a rounded pointy object (tedious process). But note this filling only works because I usually paint the machines I fix up and want to keep.
jmacz
jmacz
Unlike retrobrite, the super glue will take off logos printed on the cases. It's surprising how fast it works.. 30 seconds and the un-yellowed original plastic shows through. All the texture is still there so it's a light layer being removed by the glue. Not really applicable but interesting.
finkmac
after much messing about I mostly succeeded in performing a polarizer replacement on this 2400c panel

1752123338251.png\

the soap method @jmacz mentioned was indispensable... highly advise removing the backlight first though...not perfect, but sure beats a crackled smelly vinegar panel
RetroTechTom
Not Macintosh related but I finally got my IBM ThinkPad 380ED

I'm waiting for my CD-R's to show up and I will install Windows 95 on it (I'm currently doing a temporary Windows 98 SE install for now)

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croissantking
I asked ChatGPT to show me how Mac OS X might have looked if it were designed to run in 24-bit addressing mode.

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M
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A good start! :)

Further testing will be done tomorrow when I can find where the nice radius video card that was on the IIfx went, my LCD really dosen't like syncing to this random toby card I found.........
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Mk.558
Mk.558
Would love to see some benchmarks of that, compared to a FWB JackHammer and stock IIfx. And compared to a standard 040 machine. :)
defor
defor
What's the likelihood of seeing these produced for the Stage II?
M
max1zzz
Unfortunately I don't have a stage II rocket so unless I come across one and the scsi card it's not something I can do
Boctor
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...
Retronaut
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.
nglayton
nglayton
I apologize, I haven't been following along. I'll see if I can dump the ROM and get those pics for you.
Retronaut
Retronaut
That would be AMAZING! I have an email Bot on Tindie which is meant to email me when Mr GGLabs is back from his PTO. But its been 2+ weeks now and no notification yet. I wonder if the Tindie store is abandoned, of if something has befallen him....
A
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 )
jmacz
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.
Powerbase
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.
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