Restoring Mac Compacts

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Restoring Mac Compacts

Postby Stargorn on Fri Mar 20, 2015 8:07 pm

I recently purchased x2 Mac Plus, a Mac Classic and a Mac Colour Classic. The Mac Classic turned on and went straight away, the other 3 weren't going. Luckily all 3 turned out to be easy fixes. One of the Mac Plus just needed its power and Drive cables plugged back into the motherboard, the Mac Colour Classic needed a new PRAM battery, and I think the RAM on the 2nd Mac Plus was bad because I just pulled out the 256K limiting resistor on the motherboard, along with the 256k ram modules, replaced the ram with 1MB sticks and now I have 4 working Macs. Only the Mac Classic has an OS though. I'm a little disappointed that they were all so easy to fix, I was hoping for a challenge somewhere and an excuse to gut one and do something like this: http://spritesmods.com/?art=macsearm&page=10

My next goal is to get games running on the Mac Classic (I want to play Dark Castle, Beyond Dark Castle, Dungeon of Doom, Lode Runner, Crystal Quest, The Colony, Risk, The Ancient Art of War, The Ancient Art of War At Sea, Scarab of Ra, Deja Vu, Uninvited and Zork Zero). Then I'll get an OS on the Mac Colour Classic and hopefully get some games on that one too. After that I'm going to find a way to make some 800k floppies for the Mac Pluses and hopefully sort out a way to have a HD for them too. I'll retr0bright them all along with their mice and keyboards and then, networking and the internet!

Somewhere along the line I'm going to try find time to repair the IIe I have and then probably sell it, unless I get hooked once it's working. We'll see. My wife is keen to see the backside of some of the 5 large boxes of vintage mac paraphernalia I just bought. It doesn't help that it is sitting next to my autonomous robots, recovered PCBs I have yet to to desolder for parts and the CD and floppy drive bits I'm going to use for a salvage-made 3d printer. I can feel the time approaching when I'm going to have to decide what I can bear to part with.
Stargorn
 
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Re: Restoring Mac Compacts

Postby Stargorn on Fri Mar 20, 2015 10:05 pm

Ooh I just found something else fun I can do to the Mac Plus - add an internal hard drive: http://www.artmix.com/wordpress/?p=185 It seems smarter to solder some header pins to that chip, rather than the wires, so I can undo the mod easily if I want to.
Stargorn
 
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Re: Restoring Mac Compacts

Postby Stargorn on Sat Mar 21, 2015 10:16 pm

Today the Starmax died. I think it must be the PRAM, as there is no voltage from the battery. I tried fashioning my own replacement using 3 AAA Batteries but to no avail. So I decided to try and get the Mac Colour Classic to run an OS. Thinking that the problem was the hard drive, I tested a few others but was still getting the blinking question mark. I thought that perhaps the problem was somewhere in the hard drives connection to the motherboard or power, but rather than pull the whole thing apart, I remembered that in my boxes of Mac things I had seen an AppleCD 300e Plus, which I discovered has a power supply and SCSI. I took out the CD Drive and started testing hard drives on the Colour Classic, which worked and is now running on OS 7.6. It also has a healthy looking network connection. I'm going to give up on the Starmax, which I've had more than enough of this week, and try getting my Colour Classic to burn games for the Mac Classic.

Now I am going see if I can get the Mac Pluses running an OS off the external hard drive. I found a cool looking Seagate ST-125N, that seems fitting to use. Hopefully it works.
Stargorn
 
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Re: Restoring Mac Compacts

Postby SeanKennedy on Sun Mar 22, 2015 7:31 am

Stargorn wrote:My wife is keen to see the backside of some of the 5 large boxes of vintage mac paraphernalia I just bought. It doesn't help that it is sitting next to my autonomous robots, recovered PCBs I have yet to to desolder for parts and the CD and floppy drive bits I'm going to use for a salvage-made 3d printer. I can feel the time approaching when I'm going to have to decide what I can bear to part with.


It's a tough call, but I think we have all been there. A Classic stash is hard to come by, and ladies, well... :P
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Re: Restoring Mac Compacts

Postby Stargorn on Sun Mar 22, 2015 7:59 am

SeanKennedy wrote:It's a tough call, but I think we have all been there. A Classic stash is hard to come by, and ladies, well... :P

Hahaha true. I reckon I can fit quite a few extra Macs where her clothes and makeup used to be.
Stargorn
 
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Re: Restoring Mac Compacts

Postby Carcenomy on Thu Mar 26, 2015 11:16 pm

You ass, now my laptop is covered in coffee!
Macs are bastardsquadrons of things. They turn up, breed, blow some caps, never move out and never pay rent. And nobody will touch them with a 40 foot pole afterwards.
I say this from the position of someone with three 7x00 PowerMacs, a stack of LCs, a 575 and 580CD, a Classic and a Plus. And a token clamshell iBook. I try get rid of one, then more spawn.
Just the local Commodore hobo and middle-aged PC hoarder.
eisa on Trademe. A lasting reminder of a Compaq fetish when I was younger.
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