From the my library of clippings:
Full comment about RAM upgrade:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154419&cid=12951397
While that plan was folly for Apple, it worked out pretty well for third
market folks. Back in 1986, I was working at an independent Mac repair
shop in La Mirada called "Computer Quick" that could upgrade a 128K to
512K or even (gasp!) 2 Megabytes.
I absolutely hated the 512K jobs. First, you would take a pair of
cutters and cut the 16 64K x 1 bit RAM chips off the board, leaving the
pins in place and usually making a mess of the thing. Next, you'd use a
desoldering iron (we had an industrial grade one with a pump,
thankfully. None of this squeeze bulb garbage, thank heavens) to remove
the pins and clean out the holes. Inevitably, you'd wind up pulling up a
trace or shorting something out here, so you had to inspect it very
carefully. Finally, you'd solder the new chips (128K x 1 bit) in and
solder in a thumb sized daughter board that would handle all the address
line magic. Then power it up and keep your fingers crossed for "Happy
Mac" to show his face.
In comparison, the 2 Meg upgrades were a piece of cake. We used daughter
boards called "Monster Macs" [mactech.com] from a San Diego company
named Levco. Since there was no expansion slot, you'd cut the 68000 out
and add a socket. Then the daughter board (which had its own 68000)
clipped right on top, neat as can be. Levco also had a controller board
that could clip on top of that for SCSI hard drives - a "grandaughter"
board.
When we had accumlated a stack of clipped 68000 chips, we'd file off the
edges and drill a couple of holes to make keychains. Very cool. I had
mine for a decade before it got stolen. Only worked on the plastic cased
chips, though. The ceramics would crack.
Levco was known for a pretty cool sense of humor. When you powered the
thing up, "Happy Mac" had fangs (since they'd had to hack the Mac ROMS
to make it work anyways). Also, there were four PALs on the board
labeled Harpo, Chico, Groucho, and Zeppo. My boss told me some of the
Levco engineers had wanted to name "Zeppo" "Karl" but he'd warned their
management about the fallout this might've caused. Remember, the Berlin
Wall was still up and Reagan was in office.
I know that these days a megabyte seems absolutely trivial, but back
then it was an absolute phenomenon. You simply never heard the term
"Megabyte" except with hard drives and even that was a pretty new thing.
Kind of like gigabyte drives a few years back. And its utility was
beyond question - Levco let slip that Apple's finance department in
Cuppertino used Monster Macs for their accounting.
Alas, all good things come to an end. Computer Quick's was surface mount
technology in the Mac Plus. I was ecstatic the first time I saw SIM
memory - no more soldering! Our chief tech tried to fix a trace on the
logic board and it took him twelve hours once he got done repairing the
damage he'd caused. He handed it over to our boss and told him, "That's
it. We're out of business."
I enrolled in a four year school and decided to go into software instead
of continuing as a tech as I'd originally planned. Computer Quick was
out of business by my sophmore year. The era of garage based computer
businesses was over.
Full comment about RAM upgrade:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154419&cid=12951397
While that plan was folly for Apple, it worked out pretty well for third
market folks. Back in 1986, I was working at an independent Mac repair
shop in La Mirada called "Computer Quick" that could upgrade a 128K to
512K or even (gasp!) 2 Megabytes.
I absolutely hated the 512K jobs. First, you would take a pair of
cutters and cut the 16 64K x 1 bit RAM chips off the board, leaving the
pins in place and usually making a mess of the thing. Next, you'd use a
desoldering iron (we had an industrial grade one with a pump,
thankfully. None of this squeeze bulb garbage, thank heavens) to remove
the pins and clean out the holes. Inevitably, you'd wind up pulling up a
trace or shorting something out here, so you had to inspect it very
carefully. Finally, you'd solder the new chips (128K x 1 bit) in and
solder in a thumb sized daughter board that would handle all the address
line magic. Then power it up and keep your fingers crossed for "Happy
Mac" to show his face.
In comparison, the 2 Meg upgrades were a piece of cake. We used daughter
boards called "Monster Macs" [mactech.com] from a San Diego company
named Levco. Since there was no expansion slot, you'd cut the 68000 out
and add a socket. Then the daughter board (which had its own 68000)
clipped right on top, neat as can be. Levco also had a controller board
that could clip on top of that for SCSI hard drives - a "grandaughter"
board.
When we had accumlated a stack of clipped 68000 chips, we'd file off the
edges and drill a couple of holes to make keychains. Very cool. I had
mine for a decade before it got stolen. Only worked on the plastic cased
chips, though. The ceramics would crack.
Levco was known for a pretty cool sense of humor. When you powered the
thing up, "Happy Mac" had fangs (since they'd had to hack the Mac ROMS
to make it work anyways). Also, there were four PALs on the board
labeled Harpo, Chico, Groucho, and Zeppo. My boss told me some of the
Levco engineers had wanted to name "Zeppo" "Karl" but he'd warned their
management about the fallout this might've caused. Remember, the Berlin
Wall was still up and Reagan was in office.
I know that these days a megabyte seems absolutely trivial, but back
then it was an absolute phenomenon. You simply never heard the term
"Megabyte" except with hard drives and even that was a pretty new thing.
Kind of like gigabyte drives a few years back. And its utility was
beyond question - Levco let slip that Apple's finance department in
Cuppertino used Monster Macs for their accounting.
Alas, all good things come to an end. Computer Quick's was surface mount
technology in the Mac Plus. I was ecstatic the first time I saw SIM
memory - no more soldering! Our chief tech tried to fix a trace on the
logic board and it took him twelve hours once he got done repairing the
damage he'd caused. He handed it over to our boss and told him, "That's
it. We're out of business."
I enrolled in a four year school and decided to go into software instead
of continuing as a tech as I'd originally planned. Computer Quick was
out of business by my sophmore year. The era of garage based computer
businesses was over.