List of what you are working on!! Vintage Hardware Fixes/Ida

Pulled the motherboard out of the 660av, the IIcx, and the G4 DA to have them recapped. Had the analog board for the 512Ke worked on, so that computer could go back together and be put into use eventually - need to pull the analog board again, so I can reinstall the brightness knob.

On the G4 MDD, got the drives from the DA installed, along with the Radeon 9700 and the USB card. Tried to get the 9800 card I had for the machine working, but suspect that it hasn't been reflashed with the Mac firmware. All it does, after having the resistors removed, is to turn the monitor on for a second, then drop it back into power save mode, with the computer sitting there, doing nothing else. Going to source one that has been flashed and modified already. Also am going to be swapping out the dual processor module for a single 1.25GHz module. May also get a 360 watt power supply with the upgraded fans, so it'll be more along the lines of the DA, noise level-wise. It's not bad with CHUD installed and nap mode enabled, but could be better.

Going to soon be upgrading the Mac II to a IIx. Picked up a IIx board that had nasty-looking caps and a IIfx ROM SIMM.

-J

Apparently . . . I've been doing more borking than deborking of late . . . so . . . no comment. :-/

Just finished resurrecting/rebuilding a G5 PowerMac, so now to move from old, back to retro(ish).

Resurrect WallStreet, and replace dead HDD with SDHC->IDE adapter, install from original disks, then install QuickTake software and connect up my "brand new" QT150 camera.

Just received a QT150 in box, with camera case, battery extender, original software, external power supply, but missing manual and serial cable. Manual as PDF no problem, but I'll have dig though my box of cables looking for a serial cable.

Interesting thing is, this camera, and 2 others (cameras only) I've aquired, show that they have photos in memory, which is interesting, as all came without batteries, one supposedly non-working, which was just a faulty/sticky power switch.

It'll be interesting if I can retrieve these photos, and somehow identify when they were taken, to see how long they've been lingering in the unpowered memory, as I doubt there'll be any exif data with the photos.

None of the sellers were original owners, so tracking down the original taker(s) of the photos will be an exercise and a half in itself.

I have:

-Three LC 1 boards to recap + fix broken traces on two of them

-Two IIci boards to recap

-Two clicking IIci power supplies to do the repair on

-4 dead LC series PSUs to recap

-Two SCSI HDs to get termination resistors for

-Non-working (very dusty) Superdrive to clean and non-ejecting Superdrive to replace the motor on

-3 PB 1xx passive matrix screens to recap

I need to find out if my EtherMac SE card is dead or not, and then get this bad boy on IRC.

Snow leopard running FTP server and 8.6 using fetch has been working beautifully, and I hope to carry on the success into 7.0.1.

bad boy on IRC.

Click to expand...

sounds like a plan,

the 68kmla IRC channel is pretty cool!

http://68kmla.org/wiki/68kMLA:IRC_Guidelines

Hi,

Well, I got these a couple days ago, and:

I have copied all old files and restored the OS to factory on the Graphite iBook, which is working quite well. I still need to clean it up some and find a CD-ROM bezel for it, though.

Eventually, I have to overhaul the Indigo iBook, which will be a daunting process, because I don't know how to get the parts (none seem to be available on eBay right now).

But first, I am attempting to fix up the PowerBook. I have already determined that it boots and appears to work normally, aside from the broken screen, and that a top case and keyboard I have in stock will work fine in it, even though they come from an earlier model (they appear to be completely compatible, and I have confirmed that the keyboard works properly), but I am still uncertain about the LCD. The main data connector looks the same, but I have to do some more dis assembly before I can be certain that everything else will work.

And then, of course, there's the ever present need to clean up and organize my heap of stuff :-/ .

c

I'm playing a lot with my iMacs lately. One will be restored to original (32mb ram, 2mb vram, 4gb hdd, 8.1), decapped, cleaned and put into long term storage.

The second iMac will be beefed up, i already got it to 6 MB VRAM and 2 x 128mb ram (my 256mb PC100 SODIMM stick is seen as 128mb only, damn). It runs 9.2 very smoothly now. I found a 6GB IDE drive, which is a lot faster than the original 4GB. I believe i should try the IDE to CF card adapter that runs Win98 in another computer right now. I need to get a bigger CF card though, maybe 4 GB, the 512MB i have is a bit small for 9.2.

The third iMac is broken. It's CPU card only accepts one ram stick. Also the picture sometimes falls into a thin line for a few moments. Either i sell it or i'll make it into a tiny server rack. There should be enough space in there for three laptops (at home i use Thinkpad X61 laptops for servers, they don't eat much energy, are cheap and come with their own UPS, yet have dual cores, plenty of ram and support proper virtualisation), power distribution, switches, DSL router and all that.

I just received a 20 MHz crystal and am ready to get my Q650 to 40 MHz. It's ram is already maxed out, but i could use some larger disks and more vram. I'm also on the lookout for a cdrom and the proper bezel.

A lot more needs to be done of course, but i have only so much time for it.

I plan to Retr0Brite everything this summer.

That sounds familiar. I have a stack of boxes waiting for a lightening dip.

I need to get back to cleaning/restoring my TRS-80 equipment. Cleaned up the external drive boxes for the Model I but the capacitors on the power supplies in two out of three of them look like unexploded ordinance so that's the next thing that needs soldering iron love. The Model IV is still in its plastic bag cocoon, need to crack that and clean it up.

Been distracted by my latest toy, a Tandy Model 100. (It was an impulse buy at the last Ham flea market.) It's an interesting piece of nostalgia; I've never owned one before, but I distinctly remember playing with one in a Radio Shack when they first came out... thirty years ago. It's handy as a vintage thing you can just stuff in a bookcase and pull out when you want it, and it has the best laptop keyboard ever so it's sort of addictive to poke at. It's also amusing to set it next to an iPad or Android tablet and ponder just what's happened over those thirty years. When it comes to hardware projects associated with it I'm vaguely considering getting a Bluetooth->RS-232 module for it so I can do data transfer without wiring up. (I also need to put together a "proper" data transfer cable. The one I'm using now is cobbled together from three different switch console/terminal/null modem adapters. A single piece would be nice, and I don't think the hardware handshaking is *quite* right as-is.)

I might be getting another IIgs to replace the one with the bad keyboard controller. In theory at least I probably owe it to the broken one to make a token attempt to fully diagnose it/rule out it's something fixable. Not too optimistic but you never know. Eventually I want to drag out the mini logic analyzer and puzzle some more over the spurious video RAM corruption issue I've seen on a couple of my Commodore PET motherboards. It's... mysterious, and will undoubtedly be super-fun to track down. Perhaps poking at the IIgs might be a good warmup. (The difference of course is the PET is actually repairable once the problem's nailed down.)

Interesting thing is, this camera, and 2 others (cameras only) I've acquired, show that they have photos in memory, which is interesting, as all came without batteries, one supposedly non-working, which was just a faulty/sticky power switch.

Click to expand...

I got mine a couple of months ago, and some pictures were also there... apparently, the QT150 will keep pictures in memory for a year, even without any power.

I am trying to find some new toys to play with, so will be looking for non-working hardware (probably any LC or an Apple II)

Also will try to find a cheap Logic Board for the tangerine Ibook.

Right now nothing much to do, should try to sell some stuff first.

Gorgonops, your keyboard issue kinda sorta sounds like a problem I had with a //c that ended up being the character ROM being bad.

This kind of seems more like a blog listing more applicable to the Lounge than hacking, but hey.

For my projects, I've mainly been working on getting the AppleTalk over IP project up and running, with a hosted DDP file server, complete with per-user public_html directories. And speaking of the QuickTake, I was using one recently and had a ball dragging photos directly from the QuickTake to my afp mounted public_html directory to make them publicly accessible on duh web. All from a PowerBook 540c over wireless using the Netgear WNCE2001.

Just sitting on the couch with the pb540c on wifi, plugged the QT150 in, dragged the pictures over, and boom. iPad accessible.

I had originally started working on the http disk/cloud7 (which actually works quite well on 7.6.1/OT right now, but beware on <= 7.5.3 I think) because of the wifi pb540c. Modern access points don't pass appletalk, and this netgear bridge thing certainly doesn't, so I was looking for a network storage solution that was classic macos friendly. I think I've found it with the appletalk over ip + hosted file server.

I just got TylerEss' Turbo040 and have been investigating 1) how to make the romdisk work with it (I don't have promising news in this area), and 2) figure out just how that thing does what it does. I've mostly been using it in a Performa 600 at this point.

I've made a couple contributions to MESS. I got networking happy on OSX, and I think I've got the mouse way happier by exposing the absolute mouse position via a pseudo-nubus card, and then wrote an INIT for MacOS to keep the mouse cursor in sync. It's a much more usable native OSX app for me now.

I went through that pile of two dozen compact macs cleaning them up, lubricating the floppy drives, fixing any obvious problems like the all too common cracked solder joints on the analog board connector, and creating a bit of an inventory. With some minor repairs all but about 2 work well (boot, working floppy, screen is usably clear). I've also gotten a silly little appletalk app working so mouse/keyboard events from one are fed to all of them over appletalk. Which is convenient for 1) bulk testing on all at the same time, and 2) I only have one keyboard/mouse combo for 2 dozen compacts.

Found a nifty little diagnostic mode built into ROM on at least the IIx, IIci, IIsi, presumably what is used by TechStep devices (I don't have one to verify).

So, working on that kind of stuff. I recapped a 6100, Classic, Color Classic and maybe one or two others in there too. I'm kind of thinking my next big project will involve HyperTalk. It just seems so applicable even today.

Gorgonops, your keyboard issue kinda sorta sounds like a problem I had with a //c that ended up being the character ROM being bad.

Click to expand...

I dunno, it seems very consistently related to keyboard input (IE, what it does is fully reproducible and follows a pattern which is unrelated to screen position) and I'd think if it were the character ROM there would be corruption on the control panel, self-test, and other screen content unrelated to user input. I've also figured out that within, for instance, the control panel I'm getting that "first time you hit the key it's wrong" thing. Just doesn't smell like a character generator to me. Did you post any threads/blog entries about your //c problem?

Looks like I did the //c stuff 4 years ago now.

Looks like I did the //c stuff 4 years ago now.

Click to expand...

Ah. Okay. So, yeah, a problem with the *keyboard* ROM would indeed probably roughly match what I'm seeing. Unfortunately on the IIgs there is no separate keyboard ROM; instead there's a microcontroller with 3K of ROM built into it that controls the keyboard and the ADB bus. If that's the problem I know of no other source for that IC other than another IIgs and getting it off would require surface-mount rework skills I don't have.

(In theory the microcontroller was available as a "generic" part from Mitsubishi and the ROM image is in the wild, but you'd have to find an EPROM-programmable version of it in a compatible package, program it, desolder the old one...)

In my mind the only hope is if there's some external problem that might be causing the keyboard controller to "flake out", IE, reset, perhaps?, because it's receiving insufficient voltage, or something else along those lines.

I stopped doing it when I discovered the "double-flick trick", but I used to have a voltage regulator wired into the PRAM battery socket. This setup was powered by either a 9V battery or an external transformer (the Mac was used with the case open in the latter case :O ).

Just a thought...

Gorgonops, that reminds me, some keyboards have capacitors inside. Could be that the power distribution is slightly off because one of them died.

OOM, neat trick. I just have one good battery that i take out if i'm done playing. It should work for years to come .

What i have planned:

- Re-cap my IIgs, the big round cap is leaking and crusty.

# - fixed

- REtrofit a LC PSU board into an Apple II PSU , just to see if it will function with out -12v

# - Fixed yes it works.

- Diagnose or replace the Voltage regulators in my Macintosh Portable to fix hard drive spin-up issues running from battery.

# - Boost regulator was fried in about 40% of them bought some and did allow some success!

- Fix My Caddy External SCSI Apple 300, it plays music cd's but will not read data from a stamped or burned data cd.

# - DUUUUHHHHHH it just needed a cetronix terminator.

- Install my retro fit LC PSU in a Beater Apple II i have in the the garage,

# - did and it works!

- Glue 2 keys from some broken keyboard to the missing stubs on my apple II beater

# - did and goop is holding on the 2 missing keys for me. - i might post this one for sale!

- Test Super Serial Apple II card to see if it will work with out -12v ( highly doubtful )

# - never tested this one.

- Over Clock my Quadra 610 board from 20mhz to 25or28or30Mhz +maybe More, (need 12.5mhz oscillator for 25mhz) (need 15mhz oscillator for 30mhz)

# - sold this to coitus /// did include the 15mhz (OC) oscillator

once over clocked check cooling, check for complete functionality, including serial ports and Booting From floppy.

- Change oscillator in my IIci just to see what happens, Maybe get more speed out of the cpu?

# - never did.

- OC my Quadra 700

# - poped in a 50mhz PPC CARD instead

- Install the Japanese keyboard from my not working Japanese PB160 into my PC170, Paint the Powerbook 170 to match SE PB 170 released in japan only.

# - never did, sold to a member

- Replace the Sound IC's in one of my IIsi's that has a Very odd and strange sound output issue, diagnosed by mcdermd.

# - never did, the board is still sitting on my shelf

- take my (2) 5260's out of my closet and throw them in the yard nobody wants them, drive over them with military truck for fun

# - never did… Wish that i did this one!

- Downgrade my upgraded 128k, to original, or maybe figure out a 128k/512k jumper toggle set up.

# - mcdermd downgraded a upgradrf 128k for me, back to 128k - ended up selling this one to snuci

- install a harddrive in my LC575, Find a rear IO plate for it as well.

# - did this and gave the LC575 to HAP

- install mac os 8.1 on my LC475, then take the hard drive out and install that in my Color Classic, See if the LC575 board will work, and allow me to use native rez of the CC unmodified tube.

# - I did end up trying this, the success was not good because i needed to mod the lc575 board and didn't wanna, it went to hap.

- Try to fix my LC-III the one that suffered a massive battery explosion. This one will require massive amount of time. off the bat needs 8+ traces re-run on the PCB

# - i tried… spent like 4 hours on this one night. i could not get this thing to work… gave up. its officially a parts LC-III now.

- Turn one of the nifty PowerPC CPU Peltier coolers I got from Trag, into an actual beer can cooler! Good one for the upcoming warmer weather

# - i have not done anything with this.. but i want to expand on that with a double throw double pull switch that way i can COOL or HEAT something with this.

- Try to install higher capacity RAM chips in BANK A of my IIsi - Idea from JT.

# - never did this, just increase my HD CACHE to 1024m witch saturates that onboard MEG of slow ram. and now has a IIsi Radius card installed!

- On the idea of ram chips, Install more ram chips or higher capacity ones in my LC - Idea from OlePigeon

# - nope tried it and was not successful.. i had to remove the ram i added because was getting the chime of doom.

- Work on ROM Modification , for my LC475 /w added ROM SLOT, from Mcdermd

# - it works… i have a rom in there now! pretty sure the ram test is disabled so i can boot up in seconds even with 128 megs ram installed

- Motivate Mcdermd to get the (battery exploded) LC-I board I sent him for Ram Slots Removal for CC_333's SE/30, Working again, - will still work w/o ram slots,

and then pester him to also try and upgrade the ram chips on board, for the fun of it (I think he is in the market for a hot-air-re-flow tool) * wiggles eye brows *

# - lol some projects are unrealistic I ended up becoming very crafty with a heat gun, and i have no idea if that LC+mcdermd's efforts made cc_333's SE/30 working again

new list is short.

Floppy emu - works with IIgs only if connected to External 800k (internal port) of the Floppy enclosure, would like to figure out what that IC allowing 800k mac floppy to interface with the IIGS.

Floppy emu - would like to some how motivate BMOW or help BMOW figure out how to make a HD20 emu.

Xceed Greyscale Video board clone for SE/30 /w IIsi radius card- I would like to see this project move forward !

what ever it takes.

Macintosh Classic II - FPU PCB Re-create, i would like to see some progress on this… if none is made then i might contact Dougg3 or BMOW and see if maybe they want to make this happen? they are both obviously PCB guys

Macintosh Portable 34 pin to 50 pin SCSI adaptor PCB… i was talking with mcdermd about this…

I think this would be a useful thing to make. jt pretty much already designed the pcb or a version of something that should work.

I would like to get more involved with this SCSI2SD project, maybe build one because 75 + shipping from AU, is still way to high for

me. NOTE… I am not saying his price is too high… i am just saying its to high for me.

LOW POWER LED Back light hack for the macintosh portable 5120 - love for the non backlight portable… i already know where i am going to get 12v from… the 2nd floppy port… pin 4-ground pin 8-12v. - and looks like this White Light, Trimmable LED strip i have will work as a light source!

I have to fix these 2 dead 128k boards i have, one needs ram.. the other has no video for some reason.

I have to figure out a shot gun fix to SE/30 and NO ROM inserted issue. genie_mac is on this one… when not to busy.

- i'd like to motivate jt to send me his 2 portable boards to re-cap… i think if his portables worked… he has some good ideas/hacks with the PORTABLES PDS slot!!! who know what his tinkering will uncover.

I have to sell some vintage macs for Maceffects and Zackl. - ( compact macs ) i just have to take some pictures and post them on the trading post here.

HD20 - i think if i can find a deal on one, i'd let to get it and ship er out to BMOW

I also think BMOW needs a IIgs - i'd like to ship him one

Oh and A/UX, would like to install it on something

Oh, I've got a few different projects hanging around the house...

• Got a couple PowerBook 100 series machines I've had hanging around for a while. One of them works, the others don't and I haven't tried to figure out why yet. I should get to those...
  
• Got a 386 box that works, but is having a heck of a time getting along with a 2GB hard drive even with an XT-IDE ROM. Still not sure what the problem is, but I'd like to get it working; it's sweet.
  
• I've got a NEC V30 CPU that I want to stick in my Tandy 1000RL, but I need an adapter to connect the V30 (which is a 40-pin DIP) to the spot for the existing 8086 (which...I can't remember, is I think a surface-mounted PLCC.) That's definitely on the back burner, though, since the Tandy works fine as it is.
  
• Have a handful of keyboards that need attention...my Hammond organ is in need of TLC to get it really up and in fully arned and operational condition; my Proteus MPS needs the backup battery replaced, but I'm afraid I may have torn up the hole for the positive terminal; my DW-8000 was broken when I got it, and while it's basically functioning again, it needs a lot more fine-tuning and serious keybed cleaning to be what it ought to be...

I have an HD20 that I might be willing to trade for something. It works except the occasional sticktion

maybe BMOW will send you a Floppy emu for it?

so that is a rodime hd… those suffer from that stiction as well?

I am trying to find some new toys to play with, so will be looking for non-working hardware (probably any LC or an Apple II)

 

Also will try to find a cheap Logic Board for the tangerine Ibook.

 

Right now nothing much to do, should try to sell some stuff first

I have found a pair of non working SE/30's, re-capping those at the moment, haven't found a logic Board for the Tangerine, and i have sold stuff... so not bad at the moment.

Nothing really interesting but still too much!

In no particular order:

- need to recap a number of LC's

- in process of trying to get a Classic with analog board problems going (new post to follow )

- trying to find out what's wrong with Uniserver's SE/30 boards...slipping down the order slowly...sorry man!

- trying to find a way to get my compacts online in a simple and authentic way (no money for network cards )

- in planning stages of my retro Mac late 80's computing desk

- Ulimate Classic mod...got a cheap 9" b/w crt for grey-scale mod maybe

- Get StyleWriter cartridge working again

- and some non-Mac stuff like troubleshooting a Commodore 1541 and replacing the blower on my camper van (main priority...it's winter after all...pain taking the dash out)

Tis the season to be busy...tra la la la la

replacing the blower on my camper van

Click to expand...

are you already past the stage of hitting it with a hard blunt object, with it on max?

usually gets them spinning again

- trying to find out what's wrong with Uniserver's SE/30 boards...slipping down the order slowly...sorry man!

Click to expand...

Boooo ! Cmon man chop chop… i now have 2 more here with the same issues at those 3

so that makes a total of 5 dead se/30's, I think need to make a christmas song about these dead se/30's

maybe BMOW will send you a Floppy emu for it?
so that is a rodime hd… those suffer from that stiction as well?

Click to expand...

I dunno I havent taken it apart yet. I picked it up at the dayton hamvention, Toyed with the original OS install a bit, and that was it.

- Pulled the motherboard out of the 660av, the IIcx, and the G4 DA to have them recapped. Had the analog board for the 512Ke worked on, so that computer could go back together and be put into use eventually - need to pull the analog board again, so I can reinstall the brightness knob.

*Sent the boards out, 660av and cx boards done, 660 works fine, cx had bad ROMs and went to ian.finder. Still waiting on G4 DA board. Sourced another DA board so the machine can be used again.

- On the G4 MDD, got the drives from the DA installed, along with the Radeon 9700 and the USB card. Tried to get the 9800 card I had for the machine working, but suspect that it hasn't been reflashed with the Mac firmware. All it does, after having the resistors removed, is to turn the monitor on for a second, then drop it back into power save mode, with the computer sitting there, doing nothing else. Going to source one that has been flashed and modified already. Also am going to be swapping out the dual processor module for a single 1.25GHz module. May also get a 360 watt power supply with the upgraded fans, so it'll be more along the lines of the DA, noise level-wise. It's not bad with CHUD installed and nap mode enabled, but could be better.

*Replaced processor on MDD, sourced another 9800 video card, which worked for a while, then began overheating. Sourced yet another, and it worked. Sold the MDD a couple months ago. Now back to a G4 DA with two of the three drives it had, plus the Radeon 9800 Pro.

- Going to soon be upgrading the Mac II to a IIx. Picked up a IIx board that had nasty-looking caps and a IIfx ROM SIMM.

*IIx board was recapped, but one cap was MIA. So it still didn't power up after new batteries were installed. Instead, put a IIfx board in it with said ROM SIMM. Been working quite well, except for the power-down issue.

2014:

- Go down to Oregon, visit with mcdermd, trade my stuff for his stuff that he's trading to me, sell G3 iMac to macdrone, buy B&W G3 from Anonymous Freak

- Source parts necessary to assemble ][ Plus (need baseplate, power supply, and good motherboard) and get that thing working

- Replace clock battery on AE TimeMaster II H.O. clock card

- Source good 1.4MB Sony auto-inject mechanism for hacked A9M0106 floppy drive, so I can have an external floppy for the SE FDHD

- Source three M0116 "shorty" keyboards

- Pick up 1984-86 vintage //e system and a IIgs that has the //e keyboard and numeric keypad connectors, so I can build my own IIgs upgrade kit machine

- Get IIsi recapped and outfitted with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse

- Pick up another table, so I can actually set up more than five computers at a time and have space for them to be used comfortably

- Get a decent Centris 650 8/230/CD machine (full '040, AAUI ethernet port)

-J

hey whats ian.finder up to these days?

Him and i had a little issue, I'd like to think we got over it, but not sure, haven't seen em on in a while.