Posts tagged "Apple Computer"
Probably my favourite computer brand of all, except for some reason I seem to fixate on the Sculley-Spindler-Amelio era. Jobs kept the lights on pretty well, I guess.
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BlueSCSI Goes Outside
While the BlueSCSI is great inside an old Mac, what if they were also great outside of one? The external DB25 form factor of the BlueSCSI v1 intrigued me, so I built one – the hard way.
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Outfitting my BlueSCSI disk image
The BlueSCSI hard drive emulator works well in my Macs. But what use is a hard drive if it’s not stuffed full of programs? In this article, I’ll detail my process for putting software on an old Mac using a new Mac. Don’t worry, I will play a videogame at the end. For a couple of minutes.
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Pippin in My Orchard
One of my white whales finally came up for a price that I could justify. Let’s see just how wounded it is, and then welcome it home with a little bit of help from some smart friends.
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Another try at fixing the Magic Smoke SE
A few years ago, I got the “Magic Smoke” Macintosh SE. It was a pretty rusty machine, but otherwise looked okay inside. However, when I plugged it in after a (very) cursory inspection, it made ugly noises, failed to start, and then spat out a little bit of magic smoke – hence the name. Ever since then, it’s been a really small piece of furniture. I’m going to rip it apart and fix it.
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More Memories of Pictures
Back when I did the recap, power supply recap, and trace repairs on the Bad ADB Mac LC, there was something missing. Even after all that work, I was only left with a measly 16 colours at 640x480 resolution. That’s not enough colours at all, but luckily it’s pretty easy to fix.
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Bluer than velvet were her SCSIs
If you need a SCSI hard drive for your old computer, there are a lot of great options becoming available for a solid-state substitute. A great one of those options is the BlueSCSI, and I’m not just saying that because I won a free one. It’s because I won a free kit, so I got to put it together myself.
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Recapping a Sequel
With all this discussion of budget Japanese computers and video game consoles lately, it’s easy to forget that I still like old Macs. This Classic II was picked up years ago, and it’s been on the shelf ever since I got it home and spotted the telltale sign of Simasimac. Now that I actually know how to fix it, let’s try to fix it.
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Fixing the Bad ADB Mac LC's power supply
Now that I know that the computer wasn’t horribly killed by my recap job and repair of all those broken traces in the ADB input system, let’s take a brief moment to recap that original Astec power supply from the “bad” LC. And fix the video!
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Recapping a Macintosh LC TDK power supply
While I was working on the bad ADB Mac LC, I tested it by using the “good” power supply from my childhood Mac LC. How good was that “good” power supply, though? Well, it smelled a little fishy.
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A "Practice" Mac LC
My first real computer was a Macintosh LC. They’re not held in especially high esteem, and they haven’t been redeemed by history, either. It’s not hard to see why: a pitifully low RAM limit (10MB) introduced alongside a more RAM-hungry System 7, generally poor performance across the board, and cheap components. I still have mine, but this isn’t it.
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Apple IIe keyboard repair attempt
I’ve had my Apple IIe for a few months now, and it’s been great. One of the things that’s kept it from getting more use has been the spotty “I” key, which the seller warned me about.
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Mini-updates - PC-8801, PC-9821, Macintosh LC520
Going to try a new format for this entry; there are some small updates to keep a record of, but nothing deserving of a full entry on their own.
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The Magic Smoke SE
Fresh off the success of the trace-repaired Genesis, I decided that I was an electronics god and could fix anything. That’s why I ordered this untested Mac SE from a place in Texas, where it was listed as being good to make a movie prop out of.
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Removing the battery from a Macintosh TV
The Mac TV is a machine that I’ve had for awhile. It’s a much better TV than a computer (the board is unusually limited, even for a Performa, and has almost no possible upgrades beyond what the computer already has), so it has been in storage for quite some time.
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The Forklift Mac
Many years ago, I ordered a surprisingly cheap Power Macintosh 9500/132 off eBay. When it arrived, the box was completely obliterated, with a hole in the middle that looked suspiciously like a forklift tine. Naturally, the Spindler plastics were nothing but dust. The seller sent me a replacement machine, and life went on, at least until I had to clean out that room and found the box of broken parts.