Thread
Schmeaux's present stuff and future conquests...
So, I just decided to consolidate my various stuff and things into a single thread on another forum yesterday so figured I may as well do the same here. Some of the stuff here you will have already seen threads about, other stuff probably not.
But yeh, I'll just add things to here as I procure them/dig them out of corners that I have stuffed them into I guess.
Firstly, My daily driven late-2005 2.0 dual-core G5 and formerly daily driven G4 Yikes... The G5 is mostly stock except for extra HDD and RAM. The G4 is far from standard... Sonnet Encore 500MHz CPU, maxed at 1Gb of RAM, 2x40Gb HDD's, DVD-RW, ATI R7000 64Mb graphics card, extra firewire and USB. In the bottom pic you will notice the old 2.0DP G5 hiding... logic board issues keep it turned off most of the time.
But yeh, I'll just add things to here as I procure them/dig them out of corners that I have stuffed them into I guess.
Firstly, My daily driven late-2005 2.0 dual-core G5 and formerly daily driven G4 Yikes... The G5 is mostly stock except for extra HDD and RAM. The G4 is far from standard... Sonnet Encore 500MHz CPU, maxed at 1Gb of RAM, 2x40Gb HDD's, DVD-RW, ATI R7000 64Mb graphics card, extra firewire and USB. In the bottom pic you will notice the old 2.0DP G5 hiding... logic board issues keep it turned off most of the time.
And here are my pair of iMacs that were painstakingly rebuilt... Graphite is possibly up for round two surgery shortly due to some recurring issues. The build process was covered start to finish in my blog for the graphite one, should this be a thing that interests you. Oh... and my faithful blue G3 is also hiding in the background.
The Snow is basically maxxed out with 1Gb RAM and has an 80Gb HDD and DVD-ROM drive installed (was originally a CD-ROM model from the public education sector).
The Snow is basically maxxed out with 1Gb RAM and has an 80Gb HDD and DVD-ROM drive installed (was originally a CD-ROM model from the public education sector).
My mint SE Superdrive... bought 10 years ago at a recovery center shop for $20.
My first Mac Plus, purchased at a school sale in the 7th grade, circa 2000. partial recap in 2002 but needs full recap I reckon seeing as though the filter caps are gone anyway.
My trio of Pluses and my 512K in the wild... 512K needs a RAM chip replaced, all Pluses need filter caps replaced. The platiunum Plus and the second beige one were bought for in 2002 for $50 with the platinum being mint and the beige only requiring a FDD, and the platinum was complete with 3.5 drive, peripherals and software in a monographed carry bag.
My first Mac Plus, purchased at a school sale in the 7th grade, circa 2000. partial recap in 2002 but needs full recap I reckon seeing as though the filter caps are gone anyway.
My trio of Pluses and my 512K in the wild... 512K needs a RAM chip replaced, all Pluses need filter caps replaced. The platiunum Plus and the second beige one were bought for in 2002 for $50 with the platinum being mint and the beige only requiring a FDD, and the platinum was complete with 3.5 drive, peripherals and software in a monographed carry bag.
And this is my haggard socketted SE/30... had it for about 13 years and definitiely a lot of work in getting this up to scratch again... As you can see from the pics it had a terrible life before it came to be in my hands.
This is far, far far from being the lot of it, so watch this space...
This is far, far far from being the lot of it, so watch this space...
The 30? Yep... it's had a very hard life the poor thing. A recap should fix the electronic side of things but the case will be an interesting excercise to get fixed to an acceptable standard. Ideally I would prefer to get another case, but I wont hold my breath for one either.
Well I have another confirmed runner to add to this thread... the IIvx I scored as part of my Canberra haul finally got plugged in and fired straight up with a clean install of 7.5.3 already onboard. Everything works great except a sticky eject mechanism on the floppy. Very clean machine though... the benefits of buying from collectors. 
This is the one pic i managed to painfully retreive from Photobucket before my G4's Tiger install got too flakey and what should have been a routine re-install went pearshaped in a big way this morning... given that photobucket is now bloaty and full of crap crap, none of the browsers I have in Panther will load it correctly, so the interior shots will have to come after I unhitch the IIvx and give the G5 it's monitor back. But anyway, I've been running the IIvx all morning and it works perfectly. Have spent this morning re-aquainting myself with System 7.5 and cranking some choice 90's CD albums from that gloriously large internal speaker. This is the 2nd IIvx I now own... the condition of the other is unknown at present as it has sat for some time in the cave :-/ They are a great little machine anyway... Fast, expandable, well-built and small. I intend to get a NuBus ethernet card at some point and get this little beauty on the internet for novelties sake.
This is the one pic i managed to painfully retreive from Photobucket before my G4's Tiger install got too flakey and what should have been a routine re-install went pearshaped in a big way this morning... given that photobucket is now bloaty and full of crap crap, none of the browsers I have in Panther will load it correctly, so the interior shots will have to come after I unhitch the IIvx and give the G5 it's monitor back.
But anyway, I've been running the IIvx all morning and it works perfectly. Have spent this morning re-aquainting myself with System 7.5 and cranking some choice 90's CD albums from that gloriously large internal speaker. This is the 2nd IIvx I now own... the condition of the other is unknown at present as it has sat for some time in the cave :-/ They are a great little machine anyway... Fast, expandable, well-built and small. I intend to get a NuBus ethernet card at some point and get this little beauty on the internet for novelties sake. 
So I went to the tip finally to dump my old stripped and unwanted iMac and eMac carcasses and at the bottom of one of the e-waste bins, I happened to find none other than an Apple Colour display (the pizzabox footprint ones that can me used footless), an ADK, ADB Mouse II and a 6300. It just so happens that I am in shortish supply of Mac monitors at the moment (more to the point the ones i have are a nightmare to get to), so I went to ask fully expecting a "nope, can't take it out sorry" only to find that a guy I am casually aquainted with was working and was more than happy to rescue it, which is something I havent been use to having happen for some years when it comes to e-waste or metal items at dumps... So $5 later I have another monitor and keyboard/mouse.
I probably could have had the actual machine as well but in all honesty I was only interested in these items... I really don't care for 6xxx-series machines a whole lot and i already have a number of them, and as you can see the units are a bit yellow, so the computer is hardly a standout and it's unlikely anybody else would even want it. That being said I am still kinda contemplating going back for it if I can, just for parts and maybe also considering leaving my number with the bloke to give me a text if any Mac stuff rolls through.
I love it when I get junk Macs in exchange for good ones!
I probably could have had the actual machine as well but in all honesty I was only interested in these items... I really don't care for 6xxx-series machines a whole lot and i already have a number of them, and as you can see the units are a bit yellow, so the computer is hardly a standout and it's unlikely anybody else would even want it. That being said I am still kinda contemplating going back for it if I can, just for parts and maybe also considering leaving my number with the bloke to give me a text if any Mac stuff rolls through.
I love it when I get junk Macs in exchange for good ones!
So, having also bought a new set of 7" long torx bits and a long T-handle after my normal rather too short bit and driver walked away, I decided to take apart my rather nice Classic and remove the battery, inspect the caps and give it a thorough dust out, after which I put it back together and gave it a well-overdue spongebath to remove all the dust and such from years in storage... meaning it is now presentable enough for a photo shoot.
Next job is to clean up the first Classic I owned (have had it for about 15 years now) and suss out what has gone byebyes on the analogue board and anywhere else, as it hasnt worked in probably 6-7 years at least. If it is salvagable, possible recap candidate, if not, it can go back into a dark safe place until i find replacement boards.
PS: How good is the original monochrome Moire screensaver!
Next job is to clean up the first Classic I owned (have had it for about 15 years now) and suss out what has gone byebyes on the analogue board and anywhere else, as it hasnt worked in probably 6-7 years at least. If it is salvagable, possible recap candidate, if not, it can go back into a dark safe place until i find replacement boards.
PS: How good is the original monochrome Moire screensaver!
Update on the second Classic... took it apart yesterday after my last post, and glaringly obvious are what look to be the two filter caps busted open, which would have explained at least partly the screen interference years back... so analogue board definitely needs to be coming out for further inspection and some work (probably a full reccap) before it is put back into service. As for the logic board, it appears to have a fair degree of corrosion around and abouts... It appears C8 has leaked goo and pretty badly eaten the legs of a tiny IC next to it. There is also a fair amount of corrosion around the VIA and sound chips which I cannot 100% for certain deduce the origin of... possibly C1 or C2 , but also possibly moisture from an external source? RC2 and UB7 also have surface corrosion on the legs, however the immediate area around C3 and C4 do not show signs of bad localised corrosion as if electrolyte had sat there.
This board may be salvagable if I can find somebody able to solder the IC's assuming they arent rotted out, but it is definitely not going to be functioning in this state. In the meantime I shall check my stash and see if I have any other servicable boards. As I have owned this Mac longer than almost any I still own, and it has come with me to 5 different houses in 15 years, I'd love to get it going again.
This board may be salvagable if I can find somebody able to solder the IC's assuming they arent rotted out, but it is definitely not going to be functioning in this state. In the meantime I shall check my stash and see if I have any other servicable boards. As I have owned this Mac longer than almost any I still own, and it has come with me to 5 different houses in 15 years, I'd love to get it going again.
Man, this thing is a godsend... for the past 15 years Ive been using a small multi-bit driver with a handle just narrow enough to slide down the sides of a compact handle... except for Classics which are ever so slightly different in that area so I had to dodgy my way round them with a flathead precision driver and pliers. Was still a PITA even though it worked. With this new set of tooling I can have the hhing apart in a minute and a half.
Welp, can't sleep tonight as you can probably tell, and do not have to work until the evening, so I decided to stop procrastinating and remove the 2.0DP from my office as it was taking up legroom under the desk.... and now it looks like this.
I've been of two minds as to what I would do with this machine for a while after it became unreliable I had intended to stuff it in a corner for another day, but whilst I had the case cracked open I decided to barebones it so I can scavenge a part if needed without having to dig the machine out. as it stands I may need to use the DVD-RW in my DC as it sounds pretty sick and is starting to burn errors at speeds above 20x, and I may also extend the fan wiring by a couple of inches and replace the noisy front PCI fan in the 2.0DC with his nice quiet one.
As for the rest of the machine, it's fate is as yet undecided... Part of me says there is no reason to not attempt a reflow, because realistically its a free fix if it works. But that being said, the effort to remove the board and CPU's, and reassemble again, all hopefully without breaking anything, is a pretty substantial. And the reality is simply that these dual-CPU PCI-X G5's are rubbish... the failure rates when still brand new and under warranty were appalling, and encompassed most major components. Logic boards, CPU's, PSU... you name it, chances are it was gonna break. Even if I do get it to play nice again, chances are it's to be considered borrowed time as pre-PCIe dual-processor G5's just suck. I really don't know if its worth the time or effort.
I've been of two minds as to what I would do with this machine for a while after it became unreliable I had intended to stuff it in a corner for another day, but whilst I had the case cracked open I decided to barebones it so I can scavenge a part if needed without having to dig the machine out. as it stands I may need to use the DVD-RW in my DC as it sounds pretty sick and is starting to burn errors at speeds above 20x, and I may also extend the fan wiring by a couple of inches and replace the noisy front PCI fan in the 2.0DC with his nice quiet one.
As for the rest of the machine, it's fate is as yet undecided... Part of me says there is no reason to not attempt a reflow, because realistically its a free fix if it works. But that being said, the effort to remove the board and CPU's, and reassemble again, all hopefully without breaking anything, is a pretty substantial. And the reality is simply that these dual-CPU PCI-X G5's are rubbish... the failure rates when still brand new and under warranty were appalling, and encompassed most major components. Logic boards, CPU's, PSU... you name it, chances are it was gonna break. Even if I do get it to play nice again, chances are it's to be considered borrowed time as pre-PCIe dual-processor G5's just suck. I really don't know if its worth the time or effort.
That is one thing I will definitely agree on... beautiful from an aesthetic perspective, and the way the come apart and go together is for the most part, ingenious... a statement that is true for all G5's. .And the way the semi-sealed thermal zones and fan layout are designed is an absolute work of art in it's own right. It's just a shame that they were let down by substandard components and materials in some machines. The DP looks much more impressive than the DC, but the DC is a whole lot faster and basically rock-solid.
For what it's worth I reckon that had the environmental nandy-pandies not gotten their noses out of joint about leaded solder flux in mass-produced electronics and called for the mandated use of inferior but supposedly cleaner alternatives without lead, then the G5's story would have been a different one for that alone. Unfortunately though looking at most of that era of Mac, the capacitors in particular they used seemed to be of a very poor grade also. An eMac or iMac G5 would blow caps in 2 years that in a Classic or Plus for instance would take 20 years. And the stupid amounts of heat that early G5 chips produced even with 500 fans running was never going to do any favours for the life-expectancy of crap solder and cheap componentry.
So last night, I pulled the logic board board back out of the SE/30 to have a closer look for damage and ascertain it's general condition prior to sending it for a recap. I beleive the degradation it suffered can be put down to a leaking C6 cap rotting a couple of feet on the ASC at UE10. Aside from that however, the board appears in remarkably good condition given the appalling state of the machine in other respects... ie the fact it looks like it was dropped from a Hercules. Assuming the chip at UE10 isnt rotted out underneath then hopefully this board should be an easy enough fix at the hands of somebody competent who can re-establish the connections from the chip. The AB caps actually look remarkably good, so that should be a simple matter of RnR.
Also, just because I unburied it, I figured I would grab a shot or two of the fabled G3.5...
Don't be fooled by the haggard appearance... It looks like garbage as it was rescued after becoming basically that. This machine has some history with me, hence why I took it the moment it was offered my way.
It started life at my high school in 1999 as a 350Mhz Rev.1 used as a student fileserver, being one of two blue G3's my school had for that purpose. In that capacity it served for some years until being replaced by a PC in around 2003. Not long after that, it was decided that we needed a far better computer for editing video etc on than the iMac DV we had been using (I had my finger in all aspects of the tech side back then as a student). Upon exploring our options, and seeing what sort of budget the school had to play with, we decided that our best bang for buck would be a full upgrade of the G3 we now had at our disposal just sitting around.
So after getting the go ahead from the teacher in charge of that side of things, we set about creating a monster... We ordered 1Gb of RAM, a Sonnet Encore G4 500Mhz ZIF upgrade, an R7000 32Mb Mac Edition, a Pioneer dual-format DVD burner, a 120Gb 7200rpm HDD, a PCI firewire and USB 2.0 card, and a bunch of great software including a brand sankers retail copy of Panther. When the items arrived, we set to work turning the doorstop into a ripper machine again. Unfortunately it was at that point that we discovered the corruption issues suffered by Rev.1 B+W towers when most large aftermarket drives are fitted to the stock IDE bus. We temporarily hooked the drive up to the ZIP connector which worked ok and it ended up staying that way until the drive failed due to heat... lesson learned. Replacement drive and a PCI ATA card fixed that issue, but there were also stability issues all the time... it simply would not stay cool doing long hard rendering tasks, which I put down to the higher clock CPU , the pair of hard drives and extra heat generated by the R7000. We ended up just having the case cracked and blowing a pedestal fan through it during high load operations and that ungracefully solved our stability issues most of the time. After that however, it began to eat RAM... possibly a bad batch but in any case it was another pain in the ass. At that point, some more money had been made available to our cause, and a 1GHz eMac fitted into the budget by a whisker, so we cut out losses, and the G3.5 as it had become known, basically became a glorified toy that played our various Mac games wicked fast but otherwise a shining statement of complete and utter failure. It remained there gathering dust, mocking us until I finished high school.... but nonetheless I liked it. It was a cool machine in principal, and realistically mine ran in the same configuration for years. I just figured the Rev.1 logic board was flakier than I gave credit for or this machine was just a dud. That said, i found out from a fellow student and friend who came to work as an IT guy at the school after we graduated that apparently some monkey had unbeknownst to us had the heatsink off, smudged the goop off the CPU and that was what caused the overheating all along. By that time the machine was showing its age however and the school had all but stopped videoing anything after the performing arts side of things fell by the wayside.
Well, fast forward some years and my younger brother in his second attempt at 11th and 12 grade happened upon it again in a pile headed to the dumpster and rescued it in a poor state as you see it here. He tried fruitlessly to get it running, and eventually he stripped it all apart intending to build a PC into the case... fortunately this never happened due to the inability to find a suitable motherboard, and instead the machine sat until a couple of years ago when I took the haggard thing off his hands completely dismantled, knowing it had the Sonnet that I could use in my Yikes.
After some time, I was convinced I could get it booted with the usual G3 witchcraft, so set about piecing it back together, using Whatever PC screws I had in my box-o-screws to get it all back intact... hence the funny looking screws holding down the logic board... and a various assortment of other parts I had around to fill the gaps. eMac DVD burner, stock 350Mhz CPU out of my Yikes, whatever RAM i had floating round my bench, the old 10Gb HDD from my Yikes and whatever else I needed I found about the place. After a lot of percerverance as I expected (because it's a B+W), I got it to boot up and work perfectly, even overclocked the stock Yikes chip to 400Mhz.
Unfortunately I have slightly less PCI video cards than I have PCI Mac towers so it is a gnome at present, but I endeavour to find another R7000 for my other G3 and then this one can have it's graphics card back, and will probably be a candidate for a crystal side mod with paintstripped G4 side plastics and handles .
Oh and as an aside... the IIvx decided to die out of the blue yesterday, so now I am about to pull it down and see what da heeell is going on in there.
Also, just because I unburied it, I figured I would grab a shot or two of the fabled G3.5...
Don't be fooled by the haggard appearance... It looks like garbage as it was rescued after becoming basically that. This machine has some history with me, hence why I took it the moment it was offered my way.
It started life at my high school in 1999 as a 350Mhz Rev.1 used as a student fileserver, being one of two blue G3's my school had for that purpose. In that capacity it served for some years until being replaced by a PC in around 2003. Not long after that, it was decided that we needed a far better computer for editing video etc on than the iMac DV we had been using (I had my finger in all aspects of the tech side back then as a student). Upon exploring our options, and seeing what sort of budget the school had to play with, we decided that our best bang for buck would be a full upgrade of the G3 we now had at our disposal just sitting around.
So after getting the go ahead from the teacher in charge of that side of things, we set about creating a monster... We ordered 1Gb of RAM, a Sonnet Encore G4 500Mhz ZIF upgrade, an R7000 32Mb Mac Edition, a Pioneer dual-format DVD burner, a 120Gb 7200rpm HDD, a PCI firewire and USB 2.0 card, and a bunch of great software including a brand sankers retail copy of Panther.
When the items arrived, we set to work turning the doorstop into a ripper machine again. Unfortunately it was at that point that we discovered the corruption issues suffered by Rev.1 B+W towers when most large aftermarket drives are fitted to the stock IDE bus. We temporarily hooked the drive up to the ZIP connector which worked ok and it ended up staying that way until the drive failed due to heat... lesson learned. Replacement drive and a PCI ATA card fixed that issue, but there were also stability issues all the time... it simply would not stay cool doing long hard rendering tasks, which I put down to the higher clock CPU , the pair of hard drives and extra heat generated by the R7000. We ended up just having the case cracked and blowing a pedestal fan through it during high load operations and that ungracefully solved our stability issues most of the time. After that however, it began to eat RAM... possibly a bad batch but in any case it was another pain in the ass. At that point, some more money had been made available to our cause, and a 1GHz eMac fitted into the budget by a whisker, so we cut out losses, and the G3.5 as it had become known, basically became a glorified toy that played our various Mac games wicked fast but otherwise a shining statement of complete and utter failure. It remained there gathering dust, mocking us until I finished high school.... but nonetheless I liked it. It was a cool machine in principal, and realistically mine ran in the same configuration for years. I just figured the Rev.1 logic board was flakier than I gave credit for or this machine was just a dud. That said, i found out from a fellow student and friend who came to work as an IT guy at the school after we graduated that apparently some monkey had unbeknownst to us had the heatsink off, smudged the goop off the CPU and that was what caused the overheating all along. By that time the machine was showing its age however and the school had all but stopped videoing anything after the performing arts side of things fell by the wayside.Well, fast forward some years and my younger brother in his second attempt at 11th and 12 grade happened upon it again in a pile headed to the dumpster and rescued it in a poor state as you see it here. He tried fruitlessly to get it running, and eventually he stripped it all apart intending to build a PC into the case... fortunately this never happened due to the inability to find a suitable motherboard, and instead the machine sat until a couple of years ago when I took the haggard thing off his hands completely dismantled, knowing it had the Sonnet that I could use in my Yikes.
After some time, I was convinced I could get it booted with the usual G3 witchcraft, so set about piecing it back together, using Whatever PC screws I had in my box-o-screws to get it all back intact... hence the funny looking screws holding down the logic board... and a various assortment of other parts I had around to fill the gaps. eMac DVD burner, stock 350Mhz CPU out of my Yikes, whatever RAM i had floating round my bench, the old 10Gb HDD from my Yikes and whatever else I needed I found about the place. After a lot of percerverance as I expected (because it's a B+W), I got it to boot up and work perfectly, even overclocked the stock Yikes chip to 400Mhz.
Unfortunately I have slightly less PCI video cards than I have PCI Mac towers so it is a gnome at present, but I endeavour to find another R7000 for my other G3 and then this one can have it's graphics card back, and will probably be a candidate for a crystal side mod with paintstripped G4 side plastics and handles .
Oh and as an aside... the IIvx decided to die out of the blue yesterday, so now I am about to pull it down and see what da heeell is going on in there.
Had a small success just now in that I got one of my pair of non-functioning CC's to power on. After giving the various I/C pins a clean up on the IIvx board got that machine booting and running flawlesslyagain the other day, I decided to give the less pretty of the two CC's the same treatment with a stiff brush and then got me some ignition again, albeit with no bong so I dare say this board does still need some cap work. This CC already had a failed HDD years back so this flashing floppy type activity doesnt concern me overly...
This makes me happy anyway. If you are wondering about the grubby mess of pencil and stickers, this machine belonged to my younger sister about 15 years ago until the HDD died about 5 years later. By young I mean, I was only 13 myself when this was given to her.
Now to give the board a clean up on the other one and see if I can get sucksqueezebangblow out of it.
This makes me happy anyway. If you are wondering about the grubby mess of pencil and stickers, this machine belonged to my younger sister about 15 years ago until the HDD died about 5 years later. By young I mean, I was only 13 myself when this was given to her.
Now to give the board a clean up on the other one and see if I can get sucksqueezebangblow out of it.
Tonight is just getting better!
Stiff brush across all the IC legs and CC #2 which I got from the original owner around 12 years ago now boots up again complete with a healthy chime. Definitely seems to have evidence of caps gone leakies in the past however so this one will be going at the very top of the recap pile with my SE/30 board.
It turns out I removed the HDD from the other one entirely hence the lack of activity, and this one spins up and then dies again which seems to be a common mode of failure for this era of Quantum drive. Unfortunately I havent any 7.x boot floppies at present (gotta make some new ones now the 9600 is on the web) but I am confident that it will boot up fine.
One thing I notice about this machine however is it has a shadow in the top left corner as though suffering magnetic interference, however there is no real source of the above present and the other CC set up in the same position does not do it. Any ideas?
Stiff brush across all the IC legs and CC #2 which I got from the original owner around 12 years ago now boots up again complete with a healthy chime. Definitely seems to have evidence of caps gone leakies in the past however so this one will be going at the very top of the recap pile with my SE/30 board.
It turns out I removed the HDD from the other one entirely hence the lack of activity, and this one spins up and then dies again which seems to be a common mode of failure for this era of Quantum drive. Unfortunately I havent any 7.x boot floppies at present (gotta make some new ones now the 9600 is on the web) but I am confident that it will boot up fine.
One thing I notice about this machine however is it has a shadow in the top left corner as though suffering magnetic interference, however there is no real source of the above present and the other CC set up in the same position does not do it. Any ideas?
Hmmm possibly... I do note that the second one with the shadow doesnt make the same "thud" when the hard power switch is flicked on like the other one and just about every other AIO type Mac seems too when hard power is turned on.
Anyway, I'm going to set about cleaning these two animals up and see if I can scrounge a hard disk from somewhere in my stack and make some 7.1 floppies.
that "thud" is the degaussing circuitry kicking in.
If that one isnt doing that, then look at the relay, degauss coil connector, and especially the thermistor and their solder joints.
Otherwise, if you have a big solder trigger style gun, you can use it to wave around and demagnetize the CRT.
If that one isnt doing that, then look at the relay, degauss coil connector, and especially the thermistor and their solder joints.
Otherwise, if you have a big solder trigger style gun, you can use it to wave around and demagnetize the CRT.
Yep definitely seems like it's not doing it's thang... from memory I can't ever recall hearing the degaussing "thunk" when powering this CC on, yet all my 5xx-series and the other CC do it, and all are free of screen anomolies. Where would I be looking for the componentry of which you speak? Presumably the degausse coil is the thick thing around the screen that connects by a two-pin plug onto the A-board?
Unrelated to that specific issue, I now have one fully functioning Color Classic (the grubby looking one) after switching the 160Mb drive out of the SE and doing a whooooooole lot of stuffing around to the point where I ended up making a universal boot floppy copied from my OEM LCIII disks and a bunch of enablers off my personal info.apple dump, plugged the drive into the IIvx and booted off a floppy to copy the 402 enabler to the 7.1 install on the hard disk destined for the Color Classic... the IIvx was proably an unneccesry step in the process except that I thought the CC's floppy drive was dead, until I worked out that it was actually my first boot floppy that was a dud when it failed to boot the IIvx as well.
Anyway, long story short it now works and boots off a HDD fine, floppy works fine, and I am about to give it a thorough cleanup now.
The cleaner of the CC's is partly in pieces until I find another HDD for it and clean the gargantuan amounts of dust out of the FDD and off the A-board.
Unrelated to that specific issue, I now have one fully functioning Color Classic (the grubby looking one) after switching the 160Mb drive out of the SE and doing a whooooooole lot of stuffing around to the point where I ended up making a universal boot floppy copied from my OEM LCIII disks and a bunch of enablers off my personal info.apple dump, plugged the drive into the IIvx and booted off a floppy to copy the 402 enabler to the 7.1 install on the hard disk destined for the Color Classic... the IIvx was proably an unneccesry step in the process except that I thought the CC's floppy drive was dead, until I worked out that it was actually my first boot floppy that was a dud when it failed to boot the IIvx as well.
Anyway, long story short it now works and boots off a HDD fine, floppy works fine, and I am about to give it a thorough cleanup now.
The cleaner of the CC's is partly in pieces until I find another HDD for it and clean the gargantuan amounts of dust out of the FDD and off the A-board.
And we have one more clean, perfectly functional Color Classic back in the world again after a solid night's work... This is the same machine that looked like it was pulled from a septic tank just yesterday.
I ended up putting the better board out of the other machine into this, whilst carrying over the VRAM upgrade SIMM from the old board, meaning 16-bit colour for days. The 160Mb drive I tossed into my SE when the Miniscribe passed away got pulled back out and put into this where System 7.1 and that kind of capacity are a little more useful (as I want to put an Miniscribe or early Prodrive back into the SE anyway for authenticity). I also pulled a PDS ethernet card out of the cupboard and rehomed it inside the CC as well so might be able to get some rudimentary web connectivity just for funzies later down the track.
As it stands I'm having a phenomenally difficult time removing the hard drive from the other CC as every single pair of my longnose pliers has gone walkabouts. :-/ This is actually the reason why I ended up just assembling the filthy one as the first runner of the two... I had already removed the hard drive years ago and I had that hard drive still sitting round sled and all, so I simply swapped the sled onto the good drive and slid it in In any case the one with the faulty degauss is also full of dust... quite likely 18 years worth of it... So I will be giving it a thorough cleanup before I think about powering it on again.
I ended up putting the better board out of the other machine into this, whilst carrying over the VRAM upgrade SIMM from the old board, meaning 16-bit colour for days.
The 160Mb drive I tossed into my SE when the Miniscribe passed away got pulled back out and put into this where System 7.1 and that kind of capacity are a little more useful (as I want to put an Miniscribe or early Prodrive back into the SE anyway for authenticity). I also pulled a PDS ethernet card out of the cupboard and rehomed it inside the CC as well so might be able to get some rudimentary web connectivity just for funzies later down the track. As it stands I'm having a phenomenally difficult time removing the hard drive from the other CC as every single pair of my longnose pliers has gone walkabouts. :-/ This is actually the reason why I ended up just assembling the filthy one as the first runner of the two... I had already removed the hard drive years ago and I had that hard drive still sitting round sled and all, so I simply swapped the sled onto the good drive and slid it in
In any case the one with the faulty degauss is also full of dust... quite likely 18 years worth of it... So I will be giving it a thorough cleanup before I think about powering it on again.
Tonight's project was to get the CC playing nice over Ethernet, which then turned into installing and setting up MacTCP and finally after some degree of fiddling and tweaking setting, culminated in this...
I am a little excited by the fact I have a 16Mhz Mac connected directly to high speed broadband and browsing the web in some rudimentary form. I was also equally chuffed to find out the original Mosaic/Netscape page is still up after 22 years, making it an ideal candidate as the first web page to hit up on a 10" trinitron.
I am a little excited by the fact I have a 16Mhz Mac connected directly to high speed broadband and browsing the web in some rudimentary form. I was also equally chuffed to find out the original Mosaic/Netscape page is still up after 22 years, making it an ideal candidate as the first web page to hit up on a 10" trinitron.
Cool thread, I'll be keeping an eye on this one every now and then.
I like the idea of keeping a running 'conquest' thread. Add to it as you inherit/purchase or otherwise discover things. Might do one myself.
Quite jealous of the Colour Classics. I have a couple myself but they all need some work. It's nice to see a Quicktime sticker on one of them still too.
I like the idea of keeping a running 'conquest' thread. Add to it as you inherit/purchase or otherwise discover things. Might do one myself.
Quite jealous of the Colour Classics. I have a couple myself but they all need some work. It's nice to see a Quicktime sticker on one of them still too.
Cheers mate! Yeh the CC with the QT sticker was owned by my godmother since it was brand new... got handed down in the early 2000's with a bunch of things. Still have the warranty papers, manual and some software somewhere or another too The other CC that I restored was my sisters and was surplus from a high school... dad picked it up for about $30 in 2000 for my sister and I ended up with it after she outgrew it and I built her a 7500.
Whilst I am back on this thread, it's worth mentioning that I cracked open the 9600 again last night and swapped some cards round and reinstalled the T2000, this time in the 2nd slot from the bottom as was advised by somebody on the forum here (apparantly there it is explicitly instructed by the manufacturer that this is the only slot it is to be installed in if it is to operate correctly), and it does now seem to operate without any conflicts, and without killing the lower 3 PCI slots as it had done when I removed it. It no longer causes freezes when the ethernet cable is unplugged or messes with the serial ports as it sporadically did in the 3rd slot up, and now shows a full array of modes in the screen colour and resolution control strip modules for the Targa video output as well as the screen mirroring module etc. I'm yet to plug in another display to see if it operates as a second display and hook something up to the RCA breakout to see if the input works correctly... that is a job for another day.
Yeh the CC with the QT sticker was owned by my godmother since it was brand new... got handed down in the early 2000's with a bunch of things. Still have the warranty papers, manual and some software somewhere or another too The other CC that I restored was my sisters and was surplus from a high school... dad picked it up for about $30 in 2000 for my sister and I ended up with it after she outgrew it and I built her a 7500. Whilst I am back on this thread, it's worth mentioning that I cracked open the 9600 again last night and swapped some cards round and reinstalled the T2000, this time in the 2nd slot from the bottom as was advised by somebody on the forum here (apparantly there it is explicitly instructed by the manufacturer that this is the only slot it is to be installed in if it is to operate correctly), and it does now seem to operate without any conflicts, and without killing the lower 3 PCI slots as it had done when I removed it. It no longer causes freezes when the ethernet cable is unplugged or messes with the serial ports as it sporadically did in the 3rd slot up, and now shows a full array of modes in the screen colour and resolution control strip modules for the Targa video output as well as the screen mirroring module etc. I'm yet to plug in another display to see if it operates as a second display and hook something up to the RCA breakout to see if the input works correctly... that is a job for another day.
I reckon I would have got my Colour Classic in 2000 too. Picked it up for free from my local library when they upgraded to a Windows PC for the 'word processing' room, haha.
Mine came with all the manuals, discs and stickers. My goodness, those were the days!
I guess that's why we collect and hoard these things, with such fond memories of times gone by. Makes me more enthusiastic for my 'ultimate Colour Classic setup' with AppleDesign speakers, colour StyleWriter.
I've dug out a 9600 CD bezel, just one though - if it's useful to you for the cost of post?
Mine came with all the manuals, discs and stickers. My goodness, those were the days!
I guess that's why we collect and hoard these things, with such fond memories of times gone by. Makes me more enthusiastic for my 'ultimate Colour Classic setup' with AppleDesign speakers, colour StyleWriter.
I've dug out a 9600 CD bezel, just one though - if it's useful to you for the cost of post?
Inboxed you about bezel macman! Definitely an improvement over the lack of bezel I currently have hahah
And yeh I really do enjoy using the CC... it is an absolute slug even by 68k standards, but it is small, functional and user friendly. I used to use my sisters one (which is my currently working one now) a lot just because something about using a 10" AIO functionally 10 years after it was made was just really.... nice.
Definitely an improvement over the lack of bezel I currently have hahahAnd yeh I really do enjoy using the CC... it is an absolute slug even by 68k standards, but it is small, functional and user friendly. I used to use my sisters one (which is my currently working one now) a lot just because something about using a 10" AIO functionally 10 years after it was made was just really.... nice.
So this thread has been going for a while now and as yet my 9600 hasn't made an appearance, so I figure seeing as though I just reshuffled things and put it in a more permanent spot on the desk of power, it would be fitting to give it the introduction it is deserving of.
So here it is, one PM 9600/200MP...
I wanted one as a young whippersnapper (and was also fully aware it wasnt happening anytime soon), and have wanted one ever since and well, not all that long ago, one happened to come up for sale about 250km away and for the price I simply had to have it... I also obtained the IIvx earlier in the thread as part of this package deal and well, having spent the better part of the evening playing Mac's with the fellow who had multitudes of things which he was quite happy to part with, I ended up gladly shelling over about $150 (give or take) which saw my car piled with a working IIvx, a IIsi needing a PSU, a bunch of cables, and the most important thing the 9600, as well as a full boxed Targa2000 capture card, a Crescendo G3/400-1M card, some RAM, a 64Mb R7000 PCI, and a spare almost new 9600 logic board... and probably some other things I may have forgotten to mention. I was more than happy at having hauled some priceless things, and made a new friend and valuable contact, so it was well worth the 500km round-trip.
Currently this now has the G3/400 Crescendo card installed, runs 512Mb of RAM in an interleaved config and with some slots spare still, PCI bus completely filled with the TT128 stock graphics card (probably the only stock part left as it is picky about graphics cards), an Ultra SCSI card, USB-Firewire Combo card, a 4-port USB card ( I beleive this is 2.0 and only usable in OSX... which is possible as XPostFacto is installed), a 10/100Mb ethernet card, and that awsome beast of a T2000 card which aside from it's primary purpose as a capture device also allows dual-display functionality in either split or mirrored mode at a resolution up to 1152... I tried it out and it does the dual screen thing nicely. There is an 8x CD-R drive in it also and a 10Gb, 8Gb and miserly little 1.5Gb HDD under the lid, and it runs OS9.2 via the helper utility as well as being able to boot OSX 10.2 with XPostFacto (which I currently cant do due to a broken install and I may not fix it as there is no reason to run it with OSX aside from bragging rights).
In any case it is a great secondary daily driver and a fantastic support machine for my 68k and early PowerMac collection, especially as far as making the network functionality of the CC truely useful as I can download things quickly from the comfort of the G5, scoot them over the to the 9600, then simply connect via Appleshare and grab what I need off the 9600, which aside from serving as a repository for anything useful to really vintage Macs, I have also started using to store backups of all my remaining working hard drives in my vintage machines so I do not lose anymore viable system folders or software that is hard to get. It really has become one of my most useful conquests to date, and I can still browse most of the web with it, even if it is a tad sluggish compared to it's younger brother across the desk.
So, there you have it!
So here it is, one PM 9600/200MP...
I wanted one as a young whippersnapper (and was also fully aware it wasnt happening anytime soon), and have wanted one ever since and well, not all that long ago, one happened to come up for sale about 250km away and for the price I simply had to have it... I also obtained the IIvx earlier in the thread as part of this package deal and well, having spent the better part of the evening playing Mac's with the fellow who had multitudes of things which he was quite happy to part with, I ended up gladly shelling over about $150 (give or take) which saw my car piled with a working IIvx, a IIsi needing a PSU, a bunch of cables, and the most important thing the 9600, as well as a full boxed Targa2000 capture card, a Crescendo G3/400-1M card, some RAM, a 64Mb R7000 PCI, and a spare almost new 9600 logic board... and probably some other things I may have forgotten to mention. I was more than happy at having hauled some priceless things, and made a new friend and valuable contact, so it was well worth the 500km round-trip.
Currently this now has the G3/400 Crescendo card installed, runs 512Mb of RAM in an interleaved config and with some slots spare still, PCI bus completely filled with the TT128 stock graphics card (probably the only stock part left as it is picky about graphics cards), an Ultra SCSI card, USB-Firewire Combo card, a 4-port USB card ( I beleive this is 2.0 and only usable in OSX... which is possible as XPostFacto is installed), a 10/100Mb ethernet card, and that awsome beast of a T2000 card which aside from it's primary purpose as a capture device also allows dual-display functionality in either split or mirrored mode at a resolution up to 1152... I tried it out and it does the dual screen thing nicely.
There is an 8x CD-R drive in it also and a 10Gb, 8Gb and miserly little 1.5Gb HDD under the lid, and it runs OS9.2 via the helper utility as well as being able to boot OSX 10.2 with XPostFacto (which I currently cant do due to a broken install and I may not fix it as there is no reason to run it with OSX aside from bragging rights).In any case it is a great secondary daily driver and a fantastic support machine for my 68k and early PowerMac collection, especially as far as making the network functionality of the CC truely useful as I can download things quickly from the comfort of the G5, scoot them over the to the 9600, then simply connect via Appleshare and grab what I need off the 9600, which aside from serving as a repository for anything useful to really vintage Macs, I have also started using to store backups of all my remaining working hard drives in my vintage machines so I do not lose anymore viable system folders or software that is hard to get.
It really has become one of my most useful conquests to date, and I can still browse most of the web with it, even if it is a tad sluggish compared to it's younger brother across the desk. So, there you have it!
I've neglected this thread for a bit, however that isnt to say things havent been happening. :
For one, I recently added a Sawtooth G4 to the tower of power collection... It's very stock, a little dirty, and has a couple of broken case latches but it worked like a charm after a PMU reset so no worries. It is missing the correct AGP graphics card, so I was limping it along on my stuffed PCI Rage128 card that is artefacted but works in everything. I will try and source a stock card or a later AGP Powermac graphics card for it soon enough.
It is a stock as a rock 400Mhz model, 128Mb of RAM, original 10Gb HDD, and has Panther on it that actually runs quite respectably with the minimal amount of RAM. I am not entirely certain what use this will be put to yet... I have no real use for it at this stage (or any of my earlier NW machines for that matter), but it's nice to have.
For one, I recently added a Sawtooth G4 to the tower of power collection... It's very stock, a little dirty, and has a couple of broken case latches but it worked like a charm after a PMU reset so no worries.
It is missing the correct AGP graphics card, so I was limping it along on my stuffed PCI Rage128 card that is artefacted but works in everything. I will try and source a stock card or a later AGP Powermac graphics card for it soon enough. 
It is a stock as a rock 400Mhz model, 128Mb of RAM, original 10Gb HDD, and has Panther on it that actually runs quite respectably with the minimal amount of RAM. I am not entirely certain what use this will be put to yet... I have no real use for it at this stage (or any of my earlier NW machines for that matter), but it's nice to have.
So as you probably know I intended to delve into the cave and retreive some more treasures, bats and spiders some time back but didnt know where to start... well I found the motivation, and as there were a few machines that seemed to tickle everyones fancy I used them as a starting point on my expedition. So the latest animals to make the move over to Batcave MkII are a quite loaded IIci, a rather mint condition ROM03 IIgs, and of most interest, the 5500/250 Directors Edition "Black Mac"....
Most of you would be familiar with the 5400 DE, and the 5500/275DE as they were sold in various markets around the world, however the 5500/250DE seems to cause a fair bit of headscratching among many afficionados as it was a model that was basically unique to the Australian market... most will tell you it doesnt exist until they see it in the flesh! lol
Anyway, this machine came to me in mint condition about 10 years ago, and even then they were not cheap and were sought after... I was lucky to have had it given to me. Unfortunately now, some monkey has interfered with my old batcave and managed to damage the case grilles, and the spindleresque plastics mean that I accidentally snagged one of the rear cover tabs on a shoe rack bringing the machine indoors and snapped that off too. I will at some stage likely attempt a repair of the damaged top by cutting a section of the grill from a dead 5260 I have lying around and grafting it in place then painting it to match the rest of the machine.
Now unfortunately, the rubbish 4.5V Rayovac battery has leaked (which I half expected) and it had caused some corrosion on the board. and on the fingers of the comm slot ethernet card... the more fortunate bit though is that a good toothbrushing removed most of the corrosion to reveal the circuit traces and chip legs largely intact, and indeed the machine did boot to the desktop best I can tell?
"Best I can tell?"
Yep... it will not display video, in fact it appears to not power up the CRT at all. This in all honesty is unsurprising as 5xxx machines are no stranger to flyback circuit failures. This being said, there is nothing saying that the logic board itself is not at fault and simply failing to tell the display to power on. the only way I will know for sure is try the board in one of my beige 5500's (assuming they still work) and rule it out. In any case the board will need at the very least a thorough wash and quite likely some other attention down the track due to the battery issue and will eventually require a recap anyway.
Most of you would be familiar with the 5400 DE, and the 5500/275DE as they were sold in various markets around the world, however the 5500/250DE seems to cause a fair bit of headscratching among many afficionados as it was a model that was basically unique to the Australian market... most will tell you it doesnt exist until they see it in the flesh! lol
Anyway, this machine came to me in mint condition about 10 years ago, and even then they were not cheap and were sought after... I was lucky to have had it given to me. Unfortunately now, some monkey has interfered with my old batcave and managed to damage the case grilles, and the spindleresque plastics mean that I accidentally snagged one of the rear cover tabs on a shoe rack bringing the machine indoors and snapped that off too. I will at some stage likely attempt a repair of the damaged top by cutting a section of the grill from a dead 5260 I have lying around and grafting it in place then painting it to match the rest of the machine.
Now unfortunately, the rubbish 4.5V Rayovac battery has leaked (which I half expected) and it had caused some corrosion on the board. and on the fingers of the comm slot ethernet card... the more fortunate bit though is that a good toothbrushing removed most of the corrosion to reveal the circuit traces and chip legs largely intact, and indeed the machine did boot to the desktop best I can tell?
"Best I can tell?"
Yep... it will not display video, in fact it appears to not power up the CRT at all. This in all honesty is unsurprising as 5xxx machines are no stranger to flyback circuit failures. This being said, there is nothing saying that the logic board itself is not at fault and simply failing to tell the display to power on. the only way I will know for sure is try the board in one of my beige 5500's (assuming they still work) and rule it out. In any case the board will need at the very least a thorough wash and quite likely some other attention down the track due to the battery issue and will eventually require a recap anyway.
Next one looking sharp after a quick spruce up is the ROM03 IIgs... In all honesty I only ever really used this once and then put it away in a dark place as it was in such good nick.
One thing I love about this machine (and a few others from the era) is the silkscreened monograph on the front of the PSU housing you can see in the open picture. The ROM03 IIgs in general is just a really pretty, well-made, "finished"-looking machine IMO, with all traces of it's IIe ancestry wiped clean. It really just does reek of good quality and good design. I actually sometimes wonder what these machines could have become had history taken a different turn and had the gs and the hardware and software supporting it continued to be developed.
At the time this was procured I really only had Apple II software available and no gsOS stuff, so the ROM00 "Woz" machine with the 256k memory upgrade was ample and realistically ideal, so there really was no reason to ever play with this. Nowadays I would like to get myself some gsOS disks and have a play with it... that being said, this is one of a trio of gs's I own, being this one, the ROM00 "Woz" Limited Edition, and another which I beleive to be a ROM01 and in decidedly poorer condition than the other two but was still functional... I basically kept this last one as a parts hack for the "Woz" if it ever broke, but I may just start toying with it as a hack to play with both dedicated gs and II stuff, as it takes up far less space than my IIe and it's gargantuan display, and is fully functional as a gs unlike the "Woz" (assuming it is indeed an 01 which I beleive it to be as the boards are decidedly different between them).
One thing I love about this machine (and a few others from the era) is the silkscreened monograph on the front of the PSU housing you can see in the open picture. The ROM03 IIgs in general is just a really pretty, well-made, "finished"-looking machine IMO, with all traces of it's IIe ancestry wiped clean. It really just does reek of good quality and good design. I actually sometimes wonder what these machines could have become had history taken a different turn and had the gs and the hardware and software supporting it continued to be developed.
At the time this was procured I really only had Apple II software available and no gsOS stuff, so the ROM00 "Woz" machine with the 256k memory upgrade was ample and realistically ideal, so there really was no reason to ever play with this. Nowadays I would like to get myself some gsOS disks and have a play with it... that being said, this is one of a trio of gs's I own, being this one, the ROM00 "Woz" Limited Edition, and another which I beleive to be a ROM01 and in decidedly poorer condition than the other two but was still functional... I basically kept this last one as a parts hack for the "Woz" if it ever broke, but I may just start toying with it as a hack to play with both dedicated gs and II stuff, as it takes up far less space than my IIe and it's gargantuan display, and is fully functional as a gs unlike the "Woz" (assuming it is indeed an 01 which I beleive it to be as the boards are decidedly different between them).
And here we have the IIci after a tidy up... I love everything about these machines and they are definitely among my favourite desktop cases... except for when it comes to cleaning them. *bangs head against wall*... It took me nearly an hour to get all the grime and dust out of all the grooves in the plastic. But that aside they are soooo damn easy to take apart... literally one screw and a handful of nice soft plastic latches.
Unfortunately this one will need a cap job and some cap leakage damage control before it flies again, but thankfully the damage does not seem too horrific. I must say it bums me that this did work perfectly when I parked it 10 or so years ago. Ah well. You win some you lose some... I didn't really expect it to work without new caps.
Oh and also I dug out my old MacALLY AEK-wannabe from the keyboard cupboard... an AEK it most definitely is not, but it does the job well enough and looks the part.
Unfortunately this one will need a cap job and some cap leakage damage control before it flies again, but thankfully the damage does not seem too horrific. I must say it bums me that this did work perfectly when I parked it 10 or so years ago. Ah well. You win some you lose some... I didn't really expect it to work without new caps.
Oh and also I dug out my old MacALLY AEK-wannabe from the keyboard cupboard... an AEK it most definitely is not, but it does the job well enough and looks the part.
Just recently pulled some machines out of storage including this Powercenter 132... One of a pair I have. I just replaced the CD-ROM drive with one I seagulled out of the dead WGS, as the original one would not respond or spin up discs. Hence the lack of frnt controls on the drive itself. These are an absolutely fantastic design... Everything is easily accessible, easily removable and laid out logically.
Unfortunately no interior shots as I forgot to get some before I put it back together and stuck a 17" CRT on top.
This formerly belonged to the local paper, the South Coast Register (hence the sticker) at one point in its life, and has a folder full of news stories going back 20 years. Kinda interesting to have such a little snapshot of the past. And yes I know some would call this an ethical disaster, myself included usually, however as these were all news stories which went to print in a tabloid 20 years ago, I beleive there isnt really a dillemma here at all... It was obvious that all these documents were news articles and not personal effects. Just though I should clear this up before I get shot.
I'm currently backing up the system folder on the clone as we speak, meaning I have it and the 9600 going as well as the G5... it sounds like I am on the tarmac at LAX with 6 hard drives and 12 fans running at once. It's also becoming quite toasty in here with 3 machines going...
These are an absolutely fantastic design... Everything is easily accessible, easily removable and laid out logically.
Unfortunately no interior shots as I forgot to get some before I put it back together and stuck a 17" CRT on top.
This formerly belonged to the local paper, the South Coast Register (hence the sticker) at one point in its life, and has a folder full of news stories going back 20 years. Kinda interesting to have such a little snapshot of the past.
And yes I know some would call this an ethical disaster, myself included usually, however as these were all news stories which went to print in a tabloid 20 years ago, I beleive there isnt really a dillemma here at all... It was obvious that all these documents were news articles and not personal effects. Just though I should clear this up before I get shot. I'm currently backing up the system folder on the clone as we speak, meaning I have it and the 9600 going as well as the G5... it sounds like I am on the tarmac at LAX with 6 hard drives and 12 fans running at once. It's also becoming quite toasty in here with 3 machines going...
Yep, I had a 5500 Director's Edition, but decided to move it on because I don't have the space, plus the plastics are terrible. Oh, and I prefer the Mac TV anyway, so I kept the TV and sold the DE!
Whittling down the collection now to the really good stuff, finally pairing each machine with a keyboard and mouse and packing the good stuff away safe and sound.
Good to see how long you've had some of these for, and how well you are getting them back up to scratch!
Whittling down the collection now to the really good stuff, finally pairing each machine with a keyboard and mouse and packing the good stuff away safe and sound.
Good to see how long you've had some of these for, and how well you are getting them back up to scratch!
Yeh they are garguantuan and awkward machines the 5500... my first ever Powermac was a standard white 225 and it was at the time, a slick, fast and capable rig, and I have always had a soft spot for them. But yes, the plastics are among the worst I have ever seen on any Mac to date. It literally gives way in your hands if you pick them up the wrong way. If I ever find a mac TV for sale in Australia I will probably be all over it... They are one of my grail machines and always have been. At this stage I am in no big hurry to repair the DE as even when I do, I have no place to permanantly install it (as it is way too heavy to be moving in and out of rotation like i do with my desktops.
But yes, I'm at the stage now of sorting through what I have, dragging out the rarities and particularly volatile machines first and working out what works, and what needs to be done to make others work, and preserving the best examples of the other stuff, and working out what is to be reduced to parts, what can be kept for future trade. Realistically the Oldworld PPC and 68k portion of my collection stems largely from the period of time around 1999-2005... at that stage I was basically in the mindset of collecting AAAALL OF THE THINGS. If I saw a grey Mac somewhere, I bought it no questions asked... Same with accessories. As a result I ended up with huge numbers of duplicate machines (eg. I have 4 7600's, 2 7500's, 3 7220's and at least half a dozen 63xx machines) and a cupboard full of peripherals. The NewWorld stuff is mostly from the period from 2006-present and whilst I went out of my way to procure some of it, a lot of it just found me by chance... usually because friends would end up with access to a haul or replace their individual machines and automatically asssume I wanted them. As a result I have about a dozen complete iMac's and as many that have been reduced to parts, as well as an eMac, my Power Tower collection (which techcnically dont count as they have largely been my succession of daily driven machines) and then my pair of Lombards and Pismo. Obviously there are a few old world things I have received more recently such as my 2nd IIvx and my 9600, which were machines I actively went out of my way to get, but realistically I havent collected much OW/68k stuff for around 10 years.
At this stage I am in no big hurry to repair the DE as even when I do, I have no place to permanantly install it (as it is way too heavy to be moving in and out of rotation like i do with my desktops.But yes, I'm at the stage now of sorting through what I have, dragging out the rarities and particularly volatile machines first and working out what works, and what needs to be done to make others work, and preserving the best examples of the other stuff, and working out what is to be reduced to parts, what can be kept for future trade. Realistically the Oldworld PPC and 68k portion of my collection stems largely from the period of time around 1999-2005... at that stage I was basically in the mindset of collecting AAAALL OF THE THINGS. If I saw a grey Mac somewhere, I bought it no questions asked... Same with accessories. As a result I ended up with huge numbers of duplicate machines (eg. I have 4 7600's, 2 7500's, 3 7220's and at least half a dozen 63xx machines) and a cupboard full of peripherals. The NewWorld stuff is mostly from the period from 2006-present and whilst I went out of my way to procure some of it, a lot of it just found me by chance... usually because friends would end up with access to a haul or replace their individual machines and automatically asssume I wanted them. As a result I have about a dozen complete iMac's and as many that have been reduced to parts, as well as an eMac, my Power Tower collection (which techcnically dont count as they have largely been my succession of daily driven machines) and then my pair of Lombards and Pismo. Obviously there are a few old world things I have received more recently such as my 2nd IIvx and my 9600, which were machines I actively went out of my way to get, but realistically I havent collected much OW/68k stuff for around 10 years.
My latest eBay conquest arrived, in the form of a pair of G3 Minitowers which I purchased for 30 bucks and got a friend in Victoria to pick up for me... his mother in law (also a nerd from way back in the days of BBS's) just dropped them off to me an our ago after coming back from a 10 hr drive. God bless her!
The one on the left is a 266 and the one on the right a 300... I actually initially bought these specifically for a CD-ROM bezel, a drive sled, and a drive bay RF plate for my 9600. However the machines are largely complete, and assuming I have one working logic board and one working PSU then I can build a 97% complete G3 minitower (with the exception of the CD bezel as there was only one in the lot which is now on the 9600) needing only some RAM and a hard drive from my stockpile. So I am going to see what I can get to work, and with luck I will have two serviceable logic boards such that I can get a working 300MT and also possibly replace the acid-damaged board in my 266DT, assuming the boards are the same, which they look to be going from memory alone.
The one on the left is a 266 and the one on the right a 300... I actually initially bought these specifically for a CD-ROM bezel, a drive sled, and a drive bay RF plate for my 9600. However the machines are largely complete, and assuming I have one working logic board and one working PSU then I can build a 97% complete G3 minitower (with the exception of the CD bezel as there was only one in the lot which is now on the 9600) needing only some RAM and a hard drive from my stockpile. So I am going to see what I can get to work, and with luck I will have two serviceable logic boards such that I can get a working 300MT and also possibly replace the acid-damaged board in my 266DT, assuming the boards are the same, which they look to be going from memory alone.
Yep I couldnt go past it... I beleive the may be a member on here somewhere actually as they mentioned both forums to me.
I ended up using the bits I required from them to finish off the 9600 so it is now a 100% complete machine, and then spent the early hours of the morning assembling the 300MHz machine into a complete unit using the best parts from both machines and now have it successfully powering on and attempting to boot from a HDD and a CD... it failed to boot and had a spaz when i tried to boot it of a HDD then i realised it is a 9.2.2 install which the beige ROMs may not like, and it tries to booot from a CD but I beleive the one CD-ROM drive that was in the 266 machine is on the fritz. Aside from this what should hopefully be a minor issue, I should have it booting by tonight after work or tomorro, and all it is missing is a CD bezel (lol... here we go again) and a couple of RF plates.
I ended up having two spare drive sleds, a spare FDD on a sled, a spare fan, and another PSU left over as spares from the junk case, and I have found confirmation of my suspicions that the MT and DT boards are identical for given revisions, so I will be removing the board from the junker tonight and placing it into my DT which copped a leaking battery... Basically, I have managed to build an entire machine, and use the majority of the leftover parts to fix existing ones plus have a couple of handy spares, so all up I'd call this a thoroughly rewarding haul!
Glad they're proving useful 
I will have to create a thread myself soon, to show off my collection.
BTW, I seem to recall there is a jumper switch setting on the G3 MLB to choose whether it is in the DT or MT casing... I think it relates to PSU compatibility.
Hope this helps,
J.
I will have to create a thread myself soon, to show off my collection.
BTW, I seem to recall there is a jumper switch setting on the G3 MLB to choose whether it is in the DT or MT casing... I think it relates to PSU compatibility.
Hope this helps,
J.
I have to say you are definitely among the best people ive dealt with on evilbay in years mate... An absolute pleasure! I do very much look forward to seeing a stash thread in the near future!
And yes you are correct, the J28 jumper near the lower PCI slot configures the board for the DT (MAC setting) or the MT (PS2 setting) power supply... with the MT using what is basically a standard ATX unit.
Anyway, the 300MHz machine now looks a lot more like a Powermac than it did before.
It just needs a few RF shields and some better bezels at leisure.
Meanwhile this is the stack of parts I have left... the Rev.1 logic board will be going into my 266DT to replace the board that had a battery meltdown, and the rest can go into inventory for a rainy day aside from the empty case which will get thrown away unless anybody wants it (a bit too shaggy for me to use for anything.).
Incidentally, whilst the CD bezel is a bit yellow by comparison to the rest of the 9600, it certainly looks a lot better with it in place, and nothing a retr0briting wont fix...
I do very much look forward to seeing a stash thread in the near future!And yes you are correct, the J28 jumper near the lower PCI slot configures the board for the DT (MAC setting) or the MT (PS2 setting) power supply... with the MT using what is basically a standard ATX unit.
Anyway, the 300MHz machine now looks a lot more like a Powermac than it did before.
It just needs a few RF shields and some better bezels at leisure.
Meanwhile this is the stack of parts I have left... the Rev.1 logic board will be going into my 266DT to replace the board that had a battery meltdown, and the rest can go into inventory for a rainy day aside from the empty case which will get thrown away unless anybody wants it (a bit too shaggy for me to use for anything.).
Incidentally, whilst the CD bezel is a bit yellow by comparison to the rest of the 9600, it certainly looks a lot better with it in place, and nothing a retr0briting wont fix...
Thanks Nic, I look forward to seeing your thread in the near future... if the list in your signature is anything to go off, there are some interesting things. The 8500 and PB145 are ofparticular interest... also two machines I would like to get my hands on soonish.
So, the G3 minitower is now successfully booting 8.6 from a CD after replacing the CD-ROM drive (currently using my test drive)... Now just requires a hard disc. IN the process of getting this running I decided I'd use it as a testbeed to verify that my 7600 and WGS drives had definitely failed. I kind of hoped the 7600 was just a bucket and the SCSI controller had failed, however sadly the drives are just as dead on the G3 as on their respective machines. Ah well... I am in the market for some new SCSI hard drives I think.
So, the G3 minitower is now successfully booting 8.6 from a CD after replacing the CD-ROM drive (currently using my test drive)... Now just requires a hard disc. IN the process of getting this running I decided I'd use it as a testbeed to verify that my 7600 and WGS drives had definitely failed. I kind of hoped the 7600 was just a bucket and the SCSI controller had failed, however sadly the drives are just as dead on the G3 as on their respective machines. Ah well... I am in the market for some new SCSI hard drives I think.
I probably wouldnt use the term "modern" to describe the 7.5Gb U-Series that is currently in it (first working drive I pulled off the shelf that didnt have things I'd be sad about formatting over), but alas yes, it is IDE nonetheless.
But yes, I'm definitely with ya there Byrd... very handy machine to have too by virtue of being a tower with lots of drive bays, a great, easily workable case, an onboard SCSI controller still but also two IDE channels, and being that I decided to build the Rev.2 machine for this project, it also supports slaving on the IDE buses (unlike the Rev. 1 which is donating it's board to the DT this evening which really cant make use of slave drives anyway due to case restrictions). In adition, it supports OS8 through OSX up to a point... My only regret is that I didnt buy a couple of minitowers back when they were phenomenally cheap, unwanted and readily available. I guess they are still cheap nowadays assuming you can get one, but very uncommon to find being sold anymore in any condition. This was definitely worth the gamble... Even if I was fully prepared to simply have a pair of paperweights just for the sake of a drive bay bezel, a drive sled, and a couple of RF plates.
As of now it is back together properly and running a brand new install of 8.6... only issue I seem to be having is getting it to play nice with the G5 and 9600... the 9600 and G3 cant see each other in Chooser, and when I try to connect to the G5 via a direct IP address, it recognises the machine there, but will not display any volumes to which I can connect. Puzzling, but probably easily fixable.
Well, as of yesterday afternoon the Minitower is now a complete unit booting flawlessly into a fresh install of 8.6 with a 7.5Gb U-series I found in a slotload drive rack in the cupboard, and currently using my test CD-ROM drive until i out a new or otherwise working unit in it's place. Still havent worked out what the quarrel it had with OS9 is... the 7.5Gb drive had a dual install of 9 and some flavour of X and it also refused to boot. Whatever... it works now
Note the computer in the background of the networking setup assistant...
Having gotten this thing now together and working, I decided to go to the Stack this evening after rehearsals and bring home the 233DTso I would have something to play with on my night off work. I got straight into it as soon as I got home with this being what I had to work with...
The case is grubby and the logic board has a nice slick of dried acid and plastic from a leaked Saft battery (best I can tell, the OEM one by the date code). Having looked at the replacement board, I notice where this battery has leaked the only surface mounted components that seem to exist in ground zero are a small resistor and what I beleive to be a tiny board power LED... As the damage seems localised to a fairly unpopulated area, I will clean the board up and perhaps attempt a repair at some stage as it is a Rev. 2 board (for some reason). I'm unsure how far the acid has gone through the board, however it's worth an attempt for the sake of a couple of caps and resistors and a diode... Even if some traces have been damaged, a wire repair may be feasible. That's a job for another time however.
The replacement board, whilst correct for the machine, is a step back in being an early revision unit from the 266MT which has the Rage II+ chip and no slave support. Ah well... at least it *should* work. I have taken out the SGRAM DIMM and put it to better use in the 300 minitower, and until I ascertain whether 233MHz and 266Mhz voltage regulators are able to be interchanged, I have also used the original 233 CPU, jumper block and reg board from the DT as the parts tower was missing this part.
Anyway, I am now about to power it up, hope the PSU doesnt explode, and from there, ascertain whether it will power on and if the drives are still good... wish me luck?
Still havent worked out what the quarrel it had with OS9 is... the 7.5Gb drive had a dual install of 9 and some flavour of X and it also refused to boot. Whatever... it works now 
Note the computer in the background of the networking setup assistant...
Having gotten this thing now together and working, I decided to go to the Stack this evening after rehearsals and bring home the 233DTso I would have something to play with on my night off work. I got straight into it as soon as I got home with this being what I had to work with...
The case is grubby and the logic board has a nice slick of dried acid and plastic from a leaked Saft battery (best I can tell, the OEM one by the date code). Having looked at the replacement board, I notice where this battery has leaked the only surface mounted components that seem to exist in ground zero are a small resistor and what I beleive to be a tiny board power LED... As the damage seems localised to a fairly unpopulated area, I will clean the board up and perhaps attempt a repair at some stage as it is a Rev. 2 board (for some reason). I'm unsure how far the acid has gone through the board, however it's worth an attempt for the sake of a couple of caps and resistors and a diode... Even if some traces have been damaged, a wire repair may be feasible. That's a job for another time however.
The replacement board, whilst correct for the machine, is a step back in being an early revision unit from the 266MT which has the Rage II+ chip and no slave support. Ah well... at least it *should* work. I have taken out the SGRAM DIMM and put it to better use in the 300 minitower, and until I ascertain whether 233MHz and 266Mhz voltage regulators are able to be interchanged, I have also used the original 233 CPU, jumper block and reg board from the DT as the parts tower was missing this part.
Anyway, I am now about to power it up, hope the PSU doesnt explode, and from there, ascertain whether it will power on and if the drives are still good... wish me luck?
So, as of last night I managed to get the 7600/200 running and booting with one of it's original HDD's (the other is fubar).... turns out the failure to boot properly was a result of a bad DIMM which i have isolated to one of two that were installed years ago. This might go some way to explaining the random sporadic freezes it used to suffer when i still used it.
Unsure as to what I will do with it after i clean it up... I have stripped the Radius firewire card and the USB card out of i and reboxed them, as well as taken out all but 40Mb of RAM at the moment.The only non-standard parts are the added VRAM modules now.
I also happened to drag out another 7600 I painted black many years ago... this is likely to supply a donor logic board to resurrect my WGS 7350/180.
Unsure as to what I will do with it after i clean it up... I have stripped the Radius firewire card and the USB card out of i and reboxed them, as well as taken out all but 40Mb of RAM at the moment.The only non-standard parts are the added VRAM modules now.
I also happened to drag out another 7600 I painted black many years ago... this is likely to supply a donor logic board to resurrect my WGS 7350/180.