skate323k137
Enlightened
Starting this up to talk about 68k/ppc macs.
I'll post up a few pics and details of my projects in later posts
I'll post up a few pics and details of my projects in later posts
The Retro Mac Thread
- Thread starter skate323k137
- Start date
ShootTheCore
Legendary
Two years ago, I had a coworker give me a complete Power Mac G4 Cube setup with the original flat panel monitor, stock speakers, etc.
Unfortunately, I was never a classic Mac fan, and ended up giving the setup away to an enthusiast after it gathered dust in my basement for a few months. Odds are good that I made a big mistake...
Unfortunately, I was never a classic Mac fan, and ended up giving the setup away to an enthusiast after it gathered dust in my basement for a few months. Odds are good that I made a big mistake...
jugu
Professional
Classic Mac dude checking in! Mac OS 9 till I die
skate323k137
Enlightened
I have had some nice stuff donated by co-workers as well. The G4 stuff seems all over the place price wise.Two years ago, I had a coworker give me a complete Power Mac G4 Cube setup with the original flat panel monitor, stock speakers, etc.
Unfortunately, I was never a classic Mac fan, and ended up giving the setup away to an enthusiast after it gathered dust in my basement for a few months. Odds are good that I made a big mistake...
My story with old macs is a long one. We always had PC compatible stuff at our house, and I learned DOS at a young age, but our schools always had macs. I got to use Apple //e computers in elementary school, 68k Macs later on, and PPC macs in the late 90s. I went to a school for a while where it was a new school, and they had very limited IT staff. The teachers basically let me care for the classroom macs when I was in middle school.
I had quite a nice collection going by my late teens. I always worked and thrifted and bargained to get what I had. When I was 20, I was saving to finish college, and went to New Orleans where I worked as a security guard at several FEMA parks. When I got home I found out my parents were selling my childhood home and "would prefer I not come with them." I had to take my college savings toward a very small apartment and found a minimum wage job for some time until I got a job as a cable installer. During this time my parents apparently auctioned off most of my computers, including essentially my whole mac collection, behind my back. (I know it sucks. Thankfully, I'm blessed with great in-laws).
Fast forward about 10 years from then, I told the story to some co-workers and immediately had a PPC 7500 donated to me with a G3 upgrade card, followed by a G4 CRT emac. Between craigslist and ebay I rescued some other macs, namely a pismo 500, a mac SE, and another power macintosh 7500 that came with the legendary AEKII, worth more than I paid for the whole auction. Sometimes it's funny how the universe works out.
Anyway, below are some pictures of the Mac SE I rescued from craigslist. It was absolutely filthy and reeked of farms and cigarette smoke. I wish I had proper before pictures but I always suck at taking photos during restoration.
For the restoration I did effectively a full tear down. All PCBs were recapped: analog board (chassis for us arcade folks), logic board, and power supply all got fresh caps. A few tweaks on the monitor and it looked great.
The original 20MB HDD was still intact, and had a users data from the early 90s on it. I tossed that, as a SCSI2SD made much more sense. The final config ended up being an internal SCSI2SD with multiple virtual hard disks, booting OS6 and OS7. The machine is capable of appletalk serial connection to my powermac 7500, and the powermac has internet access and file sharing capability. In short I can access a file share on one of my internet connected macs, and that's pretty sweet for an old 68k mac.
I also set up a 2nd SCSI2SD as a virtual zip drive, with hot swappable SD cards. It didn't end up being a necessity for me but I documented the config over on the 68kmla forums. It was really cool, as using the normal zip100 driver and device ID's I could set 1GB volumes in scsi2sd config and they worked fine. The tl;dr was hot swappable 1GB micro SD cards which appear to macos as zip disks.
West
Grand Master
Beautiful stuff. That After Dark screen saver takes me back. My Mac LC2 and was one of the most fun computers I've ever had.
This was my experience with computers in school as well, even down to being a 'computer lab tech' with a special vest hahaha
skate323k137
Enlightened
Scored a minty iigs from craigslist recently. The original monitor needs a recap which I will get to eventually, but in the mean time I made a RGB cable for my NEC monitor 
These pictures don't do the video quality justice, Arkanoid and other games (Silpheed, Out of This World...) look great.
The guy I got it from purchased it from the original owner. I got all the original receipts from when the original owner, a teacher, bought it through Apple Computer's educator buy program in the late 80's. It was like getting a 1 owner car with all the service records lol.
This thing was loved, and aside from the dim monitor, it's in immaculate shape. The archive of software and manuals that came with it were like someone handed me a chunk of the past. The folders contain a bunch of copied manuals and original disks for software like number munchers, oregon trail, and other apple ii classics. I'm really happy to add this one to the collection.
Last pic is using an iigs emulator to work with disk images. Until I spring for a CF solution or floppyemu, that will have to do (but it works quite well).
These pictures don't do the video quality justice, Arkanoid and other games (Silpheed, Out of This World...) look great.
The guy I got it from purchased it from the original owner. I got all the original receipts from when the original owner, a teacher, bought it through Apple Computer's educator buy program in the late 80's. It was like getting a 1 owner car with all the service records lol.
This thing was loved, and aside from the dim monitor, it's in immaculate shape. The archive of software and manuals that came with it were like someone handed me a chunk of the past. The folders contain a bunch of copied manuals and original disks for software like number munchers, oregon trail, and other apple ii classics. I'm really happy to add this one to the collection.
Last pic is using an iigs emulator to work with disk images. Until I spring for a CF solution or floppyemu, that will have to do (but it works quite well).
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ShootTheCore
Legendary
That IIGS is a beauty! My school's computer lab had those when I was in elementary school, and I spent tons of time playing games and goofing around on them. They blew the Radio Shack TRS-80 I had at home out of the water!
skate323k137
Enlightened
That was really what made the deal. The iigs by itself isn't so bad to come by, but all the accessories in good shape would have been a pain to source individually for fair prices. Even the joystick ended up saving me a good chunk of change, and has come in useful for several games that require one to be played at all.
I got a bunch of (dried up) ribbons with the imagewriter; someone repro'd the color ribbons a couple years ago. I might try to source a couple and test the printer for the hell of it.
Finisterre
Professional
You guys may get a kick out of the second chapter of this Book that I co-authored, I briefly discussed memory corruption in the context of security on OS9 and earlier platforms.
skate323k137
Enlightened
Ordered a ReActive Micro CF card for the IIGS.
It's basically an IDE controller that comes with a CF adapter and card. Apparently it has DMA (direct memory access) so it's a very fast internal storage solution.
I'll definitely follow up when I've had a chance to test it out. For now, I've just been using half of my 4MB ram as a 2MB ram disk, which works for installing and booting GSOS and 1-2 games.
It's basically an IDE controller that comes with a CF adapter and card. Apparently it has DMA (direct memory access) so it's a very fast internal storage solution.
I'll definitely follow up when I've had a chance to test it out. For now, I've just been using half of my 4MB ram as a 2MB ram disk, which works for installing and booting GSOS and 1-2 games.
skate323k137
Enlightened
ReActive Micro card is legit. It's basically ram disk fast with DMA enabled. My IIGS cold boots in like 20 seconds lol.
I ended up also getting a floppyemu. While the internal CF drive is great for storage and actual iigs files, some programs (read, copy protected games) are happier running from a floppy / emulated floppy. For ones that don't have to run from a floppy, I have all the disk images on a large HFS partition, and a few prodos partitions where I can just restore the disk images to. When that works, I can reboot to the reimaged disk and it's lightning fast to load compared with a floppy or the floppyemu.
For a hard drive solution there's no comparison though, floppyemu is very slow for every day use. Still a great product, but if storage is your goal, go the CF route.
I ended up also getting a floppyemu. While the internal CF drive is great for storage and actual iigs files, some programs (read, copy protected games) are happier running from a floppy / emulated floppy. For ones that don't have to run from a floppy, I have all the disk images on a large HFS partition, and a few prodos partitions where I can just restore the disk images to. When that works, I can reboot to the reimaged disk and it's lightning fast to load compared with a floppy or the floppyemu.
For a hard drive solution there's no comparison though, floppyemu is very slow for every day use. Still a great product, but if storage is your goal, go the CF route.
penrhos
Grand Master
I think my old mac SE30 is still in the loft at my parents...
skate323k137
Enlightened
They're great machines! Dig it out. The logic board probably needs recapping (se30s are notorious for leaky smd caps, tantalum upgrade is usually recommended) but other than that they usually fire right up.
fluxcore
Enthusiast
Argh, I've always wanted an SE/30. Amazing little machine.
Status: currently annoyed I got rid of all my Mac stuff that I obtained from the university for free when they were ditching it...
Status: currently annoyed I got rid of all my Mac stuff that I obtained from the university for free when they were ditching it...
skate323k137
Enlightened
Ouch. I know that feel.Argh, I've always wanted an SE/30. Amazing little machine.
Status: currently annoyed I got rid of all my Mac stuff that I obtained from the university for free when they were ditching it...
If you do decide to get back into it, I find Craigslist to be much better for this stuff than eBay. Local stuff tends to be in better shape with better price and less owners.
skate323k137
Enlightened
Recapped and dialed in the old monitor today. Copy/paste from my 68kmla post;
This IIgs was clearly loved and used for a lot of hours, despite how clean it is. The tube is definitely high hours; I dialed it in "cold" and this was a huge mistake. I should know better than to adjust a monitor that hasn't been running for an hour or two, but sometimes you can get away with it when the caps are all fresh. In this case... I could not. Once it got to full temp it was way over bright, so after I ran it for an hour I had to completely readjust the screen/focus on the flyback as well as some cutoffs.
The end result, given the age and the fact that being $TIME on affects brightness, was that I had to dial it in to be just usably bright for the first few minutes it's on. Once it's warmed up, it looks pretty darn good for a 30 year old tiny tube.
My only complaint is that this monitor model has virtually no ventilation by design. I may have to look into adding a small fan at some point. It really gets warm after a couple hours. Anyway, here are the pics I managed to snap along the way.
This IIgs was clearly loved and used for a lot of hours, despite how clean it is. The tube is definitely high hours; I dialed it in "cold" and this was a huge mistake. I should know better than to adjust a monitor that hasn't been running for an hour or two, but sometimes you can get away with it when the caps are all fresh. In this case... I could not. Once it got to full temp it was way over bright, so after I ran it for an hour I had to completely readjust the screen/focus on the flyback as well as some cutoffs.
The end result, given the age and the fact that being $TIME on affects brightness, was that I had to dial it in to be just usably bright for the first few minutes it's on. Once it's warmed up, it looks pretty darn good for a 30 year old tiny tube.
My only complaint is that this monitor model has virtually no ventilation by design. I may have to look into adding a small fan at some point. It really gets warm after a couple hours. Anyway, here are the pics I managed to snap along the way.
fluxcore
Enthusiast
Lovely setup! Wow, that joystick really takes me back.