And absolutely don’t revert this. An MFM HDD in a 512? Such a unique (and again, era correct) upgrade. That controller card should be studied. Imagine being able to reverse engineer it with modern components and then an SD or CF card? Sweet!
Yeah, sadly being MFM kinda rules out the SD/CF "cheap" upgrade path. I'm not sure there is enough demand to put a hard drive in these older systems, and while you could do the MFM hyperdrive option, like Mac PB says, most of those drives are long since dead so you'd need a modern MFM solution but with the demand being so low the prices on those devices are between $200-300. At those prices, most people would just use a Floppy EMU.
@@brianv2871 for modern collector there is no need to upgrade Mac 512kb... it's better to have original upgrade for history or the original machine but not a modern upgrade. Mac 128 and 512 are not so usable since the memory is to small, they are really for collection and demo. The Mac Plus is a better option if you want to have powerfull upgrade, it support 4mb of ram and the SCSI + system 6 allow you to have more fun.
Brian Veditz and given how much software a) can run on 512k, and b) you’d actually want to; a FDD emulator emulating a HD20 would probably do just fine.
@@mrlurchAU Yeah, definitely. When I was fixing my Mac 512k and Mac + a few months back, Adrian brought me a regular boot disk and a paint boot disk and once I got it all working, I booted up to that and played with it for few seconds until I declared 'Okay, I'm bored now'. :) Unlike most other vintage systems, you can't really make disks for it from a PC and I don't have any 'tweener' macs, so really the Floppy EMU is the only realistic way of using software on these machines... Plus, those Mac floppy drives are almost as flaky as an IBM M2 keyboard, that even when you do get it working, it'll likely die again a few weeks later. :)
I would agree, but what I think he should of done is to remove the old mfm drive PSU, fan, etc, and to replace the MFM drive PSU with a new and smaller one.
Woah, you have one of these too? Cool! This is called the "HyperDrive" mod (as the controller PCB declares), sold by General Computer Corporation back in the day for around $2800 (almost as much as the Mac itself!). I believe they sold 5, 10, and 20 MB configurations; like yours, mine has the 20 MB drive installed, and a friend of mine has a 10 MB system which I covered in a video about his Apple collection. Interesting that yours doesn't have any stickers on it, mine has a "HyperDrive" logo on the front near the Apple logo and a warranty sticker on the back right next to the original Macintosh sticker. They're quite the bear to disassemble, as you found - I also had to bend the chassis to remove the logic board, and the hard drive isn't very easy to take out either. I'm still working on getting mine running properly - the original drive was stone dead, and even after freeing the platter/stepper motor it wouldn't seek correctly. After a bit of investigative work, though, I found out that mine uses the same MiniScribe drive as used in the original Mac SE except with an MFM controller board - after a PCB swap, I got a working drive! Unfortunately, it only occasionally spins up when connected to the HyperDrive supply, so I assume some capacitors are reaching the end of their lives. I'll definitely let you know if it works after the recap and might even make a video on it or something like that. The strange booting issue you show makes me think the power supply's got some weak caps and isn't providing enough power to the Mac as the hard drive is drawing so much as it spins up. I'm going to go the "capacitor" route, but I could get you a more firm answer when I dive into resurrecting mine. :)
Never a bad idea to recap, but I think Adrian's right about power sequencing. That switching supply probably has a power-good delay. The drive didn't start spinning up until the Mac was already running.
Wikipedia says that Hyperdrive hard disk cost $2795 US$ at the time (roughly $6500 in today's dollars!!!). Please back up those Hyperdrive volumes and all their contents -- if you have a BMOW Floppy Emu, you can connect it to the floppy port, and it will emulate an Apple HD20 hard disk over the Mac's floppy port -- that's the easiest way I can think of to back up 20MB off of this machine. Worth getting one if you don't have one yet -- awesome device. Please keep this machine as-is also -- this upgrade is awesome. Love to see what is on those drives - this is like a time capsule! Best wishes.
+Electronics... What is so important about the hard disk data? I'm sure he is going to back it up, but really, what is the point? I seriously doubt there is one of a kind software on the machine that needs to be archived.
@@sugaryhull9688 Does dd for m68k Macintosh exist? Because I don't know any simple way to attach MFM drive to modern PC. Maybe older PC and ISA controller card would do, but it has to have same hardware and formatting, otherwise it won't work.
ZXRulezzz There are a few linux distros that can boot with as little as 12mb of ram with a gui, im sure it could boot to console with only 1mb so any 386/486 machine should work for this task. The problem would be how to get the data out, maybe serial port over to another machine? Not sure if newer machines with isa ports would recognice such older hardware.
I think you should re-assemble it and try to make it work as it was (with HD). These sorts of mods and changes are part of the history of the computer and should be left unless they can't be made to function. Part of the intresting history of older computers is seeing how people modded them and upgraded them. You might be able to add a second switch or a switch with a few positions to allow the small power supply to power up before the main board. IE you flip the switch to a first position.. wait a few seconds.. then flip it all the way up.
That fan is exactly what you suspect. It's a brushless motor using an external controller. I have seen them in old Rohde&Schwarz test equipment. To your question: Leave it in, but make it a little less crappy in execution. The mounting bracket for the HDD and everything is fine, but the mains wiring is .. crazy.
I used to own a 512k we bought at a yard sale in the early 2000’s. I used it off and on up until I moved out of my parents house. It didn’t have any sort of hard drive with it just an external disk drive. I knew hard drive options existed but I only thought external options were available. My heart melted to see this machine boot off an internal hard drive that looked like it may have been installed as an extra option for a customer when sold new. I’d say definitely keep it this way and put it back together. This is a rare find and seeing this really made my day, thank you!
forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-512k-w-internal-hyperdrive-rare-valuable.422001/ Quote by MacSimum Upon installing the Hyperdrive, when your system is first turned on, you are severly undervolting, which in most cases causes the display to go crazy, if it comes on at all, and you will most likely get a Sad Mac error relating to the analog board. To make the proper adjustment, you will need a multimeter, antistatic plastic flathead screwdriver, and a Mac Diagnostic cable. If you don't have the diagnostic cable, you can make a dongle that will work as well, but you will have to be extremely careful to avoid shorting out your logic board. If that happens, you're done. You've fried your logic board and the HyperDrive circuirty.
Keep the hard drive. That is so cool that it still works! My Compaq Deskpro 286’s hard drive is long dead... A retro mod like that is so cool. Definitely keep it! Update: Thanks for 20 Likes!
Original 512 had the 400k drive. But the 512kE and 512kED had the upgraded 128k ROM and could then take an 800k drive. I *believe* upgrading the rom on a standard 512 can be done. But if this has a HDD in it, it could be a custom rom? Might be worth backing up if that’s the case.
Yup. We called it “sticktion” in our lab back in 1994. We had so many MFMs we needed to repair, and used the same method to lubricate bearings with some graphite grease.
That mac has such a unique story and amazing one-off add-ons. Definitely keep it and see if maybe you could even take it a step farther if you're feeling brave. Maybe even give the case a different look, style or color to match the craziness inside.
There are IDE and SCSI to SD/CF card adapters that are relatively cheap. For MFM/RLL though, the price shoots up substantially. I found one such board with a quick google search, but it's $270 www.drem.info/ Though for all of the functionality it offers, I'd say its well worth the cost.
Besides the board GGigabiteM refered to there is also www.pdp8online.com/mfm/. Similar functionality. And I doubt much cheaper if you include the beaglebone.
I don't see any point in making a interface to mate an SD or CF card with an MFM/RLL controller. Skip the MFM/RLL controller and interface to the bus directly.
@@BlackEpyon Considering the massive number of different machines that used MFM/RLL, that makes the least amount of sense. You'd have to make dozens of different interfaces for every machine and write the software for all of them. Easier and less expensive to make an MFM/RLL emulator and work out the slight controller differences in software.
@@GGigabiteM Firmware, not software. Software doesn't need to know what kind of data storage it's using, only what address it can be found at. But the interface is less of an issue than the underlying system architecture. Mac architecture of that era was considerably different from PC architecture, as Mac and PC were from Commodore, where towards Commodore's end they were indistinguishable from PC, and Apple these days practically IS PC with a more expensive wrapper. As long as the architecture is similar, all you need is an adapter to change the interface.
Hi Adrian, I am a fellow Oregonian. The old power supply that doesn't start up is usually the Electrolylic capacitors that are dried up, replacing them usually fixes the power up problem. Sometimes there is a power good line that needs to be enabled to start up the supply. Their are many Tech channels that are showing how to fix these power supplies, IE Paul Carlson , (Mr Carlsons Lab), 12voltvids, w2aew, Jim Lindenas, and others. Good luck from Ray Burke
Leave it as is, though you should get another PSU for the hard drive. The upgrade is period correct. 512K Macs came with 800K drives, and you need to check the ROMs to see if it is HFS (Hierarchical File System) or MFS (Macintosh File System). Since it is using a rare System 5, it looks to me to be HFS. HyperDrive used to make external SCSI Drives for the Plus and SE / SE\30s and even had an internal SCSI HD for the Mac Plus long ago as well as rebanding internal SCSI drives for the SE / SE\30 and Mac II Line. Look at the side of the board, there should be steps on one side so you can pull the board out a tiny bit for the steps to line up and then open it like a swinging door. You should close it the same way. If anything, check out the Analog Board and clean up/replace any bad solder you find and check the connectors for burn marks.
THANK YOU! You saved my Applied Engineering Vulcan 40MB MFM Western Digital drive! I have one of these in my original owner Apple //e and when I brought it out of 30 year storage the drive would not spin up. I bought exactly the lubricant that you showed/mentioned and to my delight the drive spun up after putting it on an external power supply. Amazing!
Keep it as-is! Even though an MFM drive on a platform that was historically known to use SCSI for a very long time seems weird, I'd still keep it as-is. Consider it like the Mac equivalent to the IBM 5160 XT.
You are thinking of the Mac Plus - earlier all-in-ones didn't have SCSI. There was an unofficial weird external hard drive that plugged into the external floppy port though...
Except it wasnt unofficial. it was called the Apple HD20. But you needed the enhanced ROMs to natively boot it. Otherwise you had to have a boot disk to load the driver before it transferred control over to the hard drive.
That drive setup is cool as hell! I love period aftermarket mods like this. Keep it together! Also look into doing the caps on the analog board, it may be a little slow to warm up with old caps.
Leave it a the way it is, adding upgrades to these machines in that era was common due to the speed of development. My dad had a Macintosh II back in about 1989, it came originally with a 40MB HD and 4MB of RAM, that was increased to 8MB of RAM later. In about 1991 the logic board was swapped out for the IIx version, and had dual 1.44MB floppy drives added, as well as upping the RAM to 16MB, it had a special graphics card fitted for the monitor which was a 21" if I remember rightly. Also had the apple scanner and laser writer II printer. it was used for desktop publishing at the time, it was quite an investment ! I sold that machine for just NZ$50 about 15 years ago, and it was still working! I still have the full set of System 7.0 / 7.1 in its original box that was used with that machine,
Only just discovered your channel and I am loving your old Macintosh discoveries! Reminds me when I have discovered accelerator cards hiding in modest Macintosh SEs before :-)
@Adrian Black The Mac 512k was originally available with both types of floppy drives. The higher capacity drive was an optional upgrade. About the HDD, like the Mac128, that is an authentic upgrade. Keep it! It's a very cool aspect of that computer! The first boot corruption problem is actually the way those upgrades worked BITD. The early upgrades required the reset be pressed manually because the HDD needed time to spin up. Not all of the HDD upgrades did that. Later versions paused the system boot long enough to account for the spin up time. This quirk is actually authentic as well. Do your thing fixing it up, but keep it as is. It'll be a wonderful show-case and conversation piece!
Disclaimer: Don't take this the wrong way! It's something we're _all_ guilty of. I just want to clear up any fog left lingering when it comes to the seemingly endless acronyms and definitions used in the world of computing. Many of you probably already know this and perhaps even the author himself, however the habit has become so pervasive that it's often never given a thought. For years, and perhaps not really incorrectly you often hear older ST-506/ST-412 drives being referred to by the encoding method that they use. Almost every ST-506/ST-412 that you run into uses RLL (Run Length-Limited) with either FM or MFM encoding schemes. MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation) is merely a particular type of encoding scheme as opposed to FM (Frequency Modulation) where there are differences in density. P.S. Don't remove the hard disk modification! Very cool.
"My Pappy said son you're gonna drive me to drinkin' if you don't stop drivin' that hotrod.... Macintosh." Once again, a vintage hotrod is cool... even if it's a bit inelegant and not ready for "Mac-o-Rama." It still hauls ass in a retro kinda way.
The old Mac lover in me says “revert it back” but I like the way you tinker (improve) things so I say keep as you got it! New subscriber and I love your vids!
Yeah, but think of it this way. It's not terribly difficult to find stock 512Ks even though they are getting on in years. But finding ones modded back in the day, with those mods still working? It's kinda nice to preserve that history as well.
ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!! Definitively keep it as it is! Do you really think that the power supply is "too slow". It should start up in some milliseconds. Or is it the HDD? Does someone knows if that's "normal" behaviour? Regards Doktor64!
Wow what a find! Twice I have tried buy Mac 512k's and have always had issues with dodgy sellers...and here you have two of them! What a surprise to see this HDD setup! I am guessing that this was a very very early modification to address the lack of an internal HDD in the Mac 512k. You did a great job getting it apart and changing the power supply. I would just leave it the way it is currently and just enjoy it whilst the MFM HDD is still functional.After that fails then put it back to stock.
This was such a fascinating video! I have a pretty large collection of macs and I always find it amazing when there is something in there that is out of the ordinary. Image, a hard drive in a classic mac? SO cool. If I were you, I would put it back together (after you fix that power supply glitch) and run it with the hard drive. It would seem somebody put an awful lot of work into it. I'm thinking it's a rare animal! GREAT video!
General Computer Corporation made a US$2,795 Hyperdrive hard drive for the Mac, they also made a 2 meg upgrade. You have a period correct computer for the more wealthier of users.
I just gasped at 14:29 because you just said you weren't gonna touch the supply and then it cut to you holding it. Took a sec to realize it was unplugged. lol
gotta keep it the way it is, this is screeming old school mod and those are always fun to find. If anything I would say keep working on the power supply to get it (or another one) that can provide voltage fast enough to have it boot properly without a reset. Super fun video and great find.
This is an awesome demonstration of the kinds of ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking hardware engineers gave us back in the day! I'd say get it back together with the MFM drive intact, and bonus if you can get the original PSU working. I also echo what others have said about capturing the data off the drive so that the drivers and whatnot can be preserved for posterity (and anyone else who might run across a machine with this upgrade)
Now THERE'S something you don't see everyday! I'm still trying to get my Mac Plus to boot from a SCSI2SD adapter I have mounted in an external SCSI HD enclosure. It recognizes it and can access it, but it won't boot from it. People have told me it is likely needing a ROM upgrade. I'm also lacking a terminator, so it may be two-fold. Cool machines, man!
Keep it as it is, a rare example of what was available, also see if you can image/backup that drive, never know when you find an old piece of software that disks/downloads dont exist anymore
The Mac 512 was my family's first Mac back in the 80s. My dad decided to use a external harddrive instead of a internal one like this one. It was a large sucker. I think I still have it too. A whole 40 megs.
I wonder if the mods will make this Mac harder to preserve? Also, can you replace the 10MB disk with a modern solid state MFM adapter? It would be cool to honor the custom MFM board while updating the actual disk to something quieter.
I’d leave the real drive in there. Who doesn’t like the sound of a stepper-motor drive? And it would be absolutely bonkers in my opinion to pull a fully-functional and period-correct MFM drive out just to put a modern solid-state solution in there. That drive has lasted over 3-decades already, so I think it’ll likely continue to work for years to come.
That is awesome. Worth keeping around just because it’s so uncommon, I think. Plus it sounds like you know your way around MFM drives, so you can keep it going.
I had an Amiga 2000HD that had an MFM/RLL 20MB hard drive in it and when that died, I remember buying a Seagate 85MB - 5 1/4" Hard drive for $475 which was in the 90's was a lot and its still a lot today for a hard drive :)
Hi Adrian, Once again an extremely well-made video which I found quite enjoyable. I really like your restoration projects on eighties and nineties hardware so keep it coming! As for your question, call me crazy but again I'd like to vote for "keep it". Why? Because I (again) think the upgrade is time-appropriate. MFM harddrives are ancient and this one not only works but boots too! That's special in and of itself; I've worked on numerous IBM PC XTs and if they have an MFM harddrive, most of the time, the thing is broken! That's it for my 5 cents, keep up the good work & thanks again for your videos! -Daan
That is very cool! Back it up, and keep it how it is. You might want to take a hint from the previous owner and add a fan though.. I think there were third party add-on ones that mounted on the outside of the case somewhere for some of the early macs, but maybe that was more SE era.. i don't recall for sure.
Stiction is definitely a commonly used term within the industry. I don't know if it was official, but it was certainly taught in the training sessions for those building hard drives at IBM.
Please keep it as it is. Probably you should do a backup from the MFM. If you want, you could change the HDD against something with more disk space. I'm quite jealous about this little "power mac". Anyways, great content, glad to be a subscriber to your channel!
I seen one of these in a school recently, it had similar issues starting up, they were going to bin it - might pop along Monday and see if its wanting a new home. I think keep yours as is, and also backup the data for historic value.
So many of us put extra ram, hard drives changed the 400k floppy to 800k ones... and FileMaker, amazing how that database is still around and lively! (I program with it every single day...) As a student I used to upgrade others Mac to 2 or 4 meg of RAM. Then some apps you'd load in a ram disk, making the machine pretty fast.
Whatever you do, you should make an image of those EPROMS! A cheap $50 eBay TL866II Plus Programmer will do the trick. I'd get in a habit of doing that on all your old computers. There will come a day when the EPROMS *WILL* lose their contents, and then you will need a copy to burn a new one. It would be a great service to your viewers if you posted a copy of the EPROMS you find so if someone else runs across one of the HyperVisor cards with a bad EPROM, they can fix theirs. Anyway, my vote is to keep all the mods the original owner did, it's always nice to see all the hard work someone did to make the machine they wanted and not just be happy with the stock unit. A true hacker and maker owned that machine back in the day!
Definitively make it a supermac! Don't revert it back!
Upgrade this bad boy as much as you can! It's already been heavily modded, why stop now!
Yeah, I'm with the leave it as it is crowd. It's not an awful mod, though it might be nice to figure out a better way to mount the logic board.
@StarkRG It's very neat and professionally done. I did this kind of stuff back in the day and I say keep it like it is.
And absolutely don’t revert this. An MFM HDD in a 512? Such a unique (and again, era correct) upgrade. That controller card should be studied. Imagine being able to reverse engineer it with modern components and then an SD or CF card? Sweet!
it's the hyperdrive upgrade, it was very commun on 128kb and 512kb mac at this time. Today they are very rare because all drive dies long ago.
Yeah, sadly being MFM kinda rules out the SD/CF "cheap" upgrade path. I'm not sure there is enough demand to put a hard drive in these older systems, and while you could do the MFM hyperdrive option, like Mac PB says, most of those drives are long since dead so you'd need a modern MFM solution but with the demand being so low the prices on those devices are between $200-300. At those prices, most people would just use a Floppy EMU.
@@brianv2871 for modern collector there is no need to upgrade Mac 512kb... it's better to have original upgrade for history or the original machine but not a modern upgrade. Mac 128 and 512 are not so usable since the memory is to small, they are really for collection and demo. The Mac Plus is a better option if you want to have powerfull upgrade, it support 4mb of ram and the SCSI + system 6 allow you to have more fun.
Brian Veditz and given how much software a) can run on 512k, and b) you’d actually want to; a FDD emulator emulating a HD20 would probably do just fine.
@@mrlurchAU Yeah, definitely. When I was fixing my Mac 512k and Mac + a few months back, Adrian brought me a regular boot disk and a paint boot disk and once I got it all working, I booted up to that and played with it for few seconds until I declared 'Okay, I'm bored now'. :) Unlike most other vintage systems, you can't really make disks for it from a PC and I don't have any 'tweener' macs, so really the Floppy EMU is the only realistic way of using software on these machines... Plus, those Mac floppy drives are almost as flaky as an IBM M2 keyboard, that even when you do get it working, it'll likely die again a few weeks later. :)
Please, don't revert it! Make it work with the hard drive. These old mods are super cool!
I would agree, but what I think he should of done is to remove the old mfm drive PSU, fan, etc, and to replace the MFM drive PSU with a new and smaller one.
yesh
Woah, you have one of these too? Cool! This is called the "HyperDrive" mod (as the controller PCB declares), sold by General Computer Corporation back in the day for around $2800 (almost as much as the Mac itself!). I believe they sold 5, 10, and 20 MB configurations; like yours, mine has the 20 MB drive installed, and a friend of mine has a 10 MB system which I covered in a video about his Apple collection. Interesting that yours doesn't have any stickers on it, mine has a "HyperDrive" logo on the front near the Apple logo and a warranty sticker on the back right next to the original Macintosh sticker. They're quite the bear to disassemble, as you found - I also had to bend the chassis to remove the logic board, and the hard drive isn't very easy to take out either. I'm still working on getting mine running properly - the original drive was stone dead, and even after freeing the platter/stepper motor it wouldn't seek correctly. After a bit of investigative work, though, I found out that mine uses the same MiniScribe drive as used in the original Mac SE except with an MFM controller board - after a PCB swap, I got a working drive! Unfortunately, it only occasionally spins up when connected to the HyperDrive supply, so I assume some capacitors are reaching the end of their lives. I'll definitely let you know if it works after the recap and might even make a video on it or something like that.
The strange booting issue you show makes me think the power supply's got some weak caps and isn't providing enough power to the Mac as the hard drive is drawing so much as it spins up. I'm going to go the "capacitor" route, but I could get you a more firm answer when I dive into resurrecting mine. :)
Never a bad idea to recap, but I think Adrian's right about power sequencing. That switching supply probably has a power-good delay. The drive didn't start spinning up until the Mac was already running.
Wikipedia says that Hyperdrive hard disk cost $2795 US$ at the time (roughly $6500 in today's dollars!!!).
Please back up those Hyperdrive volumes and all their contents -- if you have a BMOW Floppy Emu, you can connect it to the floppy port, and it will emulate an Apple HD20 hard disk over the Mac's floppy port -- that's the easiest way I can think of to back up 20MB off of this machine. Worth getting one if you don't have one yet -- awesome device. Please keep this machine as-is also -- this upgrade is awesome. Love to see what is on those drives - this is like a time capsule! Best wishes.
Yes, and maybe upload that hyperdrive testing utilities to internet archive or something, if it's not online already.
$6.5K for an HDD --- OMFG
who was the owner of this MAC???
NO! This machine should be back the way it was with this upgrade. It is a very neat job, the hard disk has lasted 35 years, it'll be fine.
@@adriansdigitalbasement this is fabulous
+Electronics... What is so important about the hard disk data? I'm sure he is going to back it up, but really, what is the point? I seriously doubt there is one of a kind software on the machine that needs to be archived.
The mods are really old too, so it would seem silly to make it just another stock machine rather than keep it with period mods.
Don't make it stock, please. Somebody put a lot of effort into that back in the day
You should take it further. Try to get more ram. A faster CPU. Make this fucker as crazy as you can!
MFM/RLL drives last forever, but I would still make a backup.
Agreed. He should make a DD image of the drive
@@sugaryhull9688 Does dd for m68k Macintosh exist? Because I don't know any simple way to attach MFM drive to modern PC. Maybe older PC and ISA controller card would do, but it has to have same hardware and formatting, otherwise it won't work.
ZXRulezzz
There are a few linux distros that can boot with as little as 12mb of ram with a gui, im sure it could boot to console with only 1mb so any 386/486 machine should work for this task. The problem would be how to get the data out, maybe serial port over to another machine?
Not sure if newer machines with isa ports would recognice such older hardware.
@@laharl2k Would an AT or XT be able to run somethig like that? They could recognise the drive and use an XTIDE to get the files to a modern computer.
Agreed, they just don't like sitting unpowered for long...
I think you should re-assemble it and try to make it work as it was (with HD). These sorts of mods and changes are part of the history of the computer and should be left unless they can't be made to function. Part of the intresting history of older computers is seeing how people modded them and upgraded them. You might be able to add a second switch or a switch with a few positions to allow the small power supply to power up before the main board. IE you flip the switch to a first position.. wait a few seconds.. then flip it all the way up.
That fan is exactly what you suspect. It's a brushless motor using an external controller.
I have seen them in old Rohde&Schwarz test equipment.
To your question: Leave it in, but make it a little less crappy in execution. The mounting bracket for the HDD and everything is fine, but the mains wiring is .. crazy.
I used to own a 512k we bought at a yard sale in the early 2000’s. I used it off and on up until I moved out of my parents house. It didn’t have any sort of hard drive with it just an external disk drive. I knew hard drive options existed but I only thought external options were available. My heart melted to see this machine boot off an internal hard drive that looked like it may have been installed as an extra option for a customer when sold new. I’d say definitely keep it this way and put it back together. This is a rare find and seeing this really made my day, thank you!
Keep it and back up the old HDD
forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-512k-w-internal-hyperdrive-rare-valuable.422001/
Quote by MacSimum
Upon installing the Hyperdrive, when your system is first turned on, you are severly undervolting, which in most cases causes the display to go crazy, if it comes on at all, and you will most likely get a Sad Mac error relating to the analog board.
To make the proper adjustment, you will need a multimeter, antistatic plastic flathead screwdriver, and a Mac Diagnostic cable. If you don't have the diagnostic cable, you can make a dongle that will work as well, but you will have to be extremely careful to avoid shorting out your logic board. If that happens, you're done. You've fried your logic board and the HyperDrive circuirty.
Keep the hard drive. That is so cool that it still works! My Compaq Deskpro 286’s hard drive is long dead... A retro mod like that is so cool. Definitely keep it!
Update: Thanks for 20 Likes!
Keep it as-is, as you mentioned, those are "era correct" mods :)
Original 512 had the 400k drive. But the 512kE and 512kED had the upgraded 128k ROM and could then take an 800k drive. I *believe* upgrading the rom on a standard 512 can be done.
But if this has a HDD in it, it could be a custom rom? Might be worth backing up if that’s the case.
Yup. We called it “sticktion” in our lab back in 1994. We had so many MFMs we needed to repair, and used the same method to lubricate bearings with some graphite grease.
Ah yes the stiction problem, give [the stuck hdd] a good ol' whack and it should free up!
hyperdrive were one of the few companies back in the day providing this this upgrade with the blessing of apple keeping the warranty intact, keep it
That mac has such a unique story and amazing one-off add-ons. Definitely keep it and see if maybe you could even take it a step farther if you're feeling brave. Maybe even give the case a different look, style or color to match the craziness inside.
keep as is... dont know if there a mod to replace the old harddrive with something like a sdcard of CF or something in case of the drive failing
There are IDE and SCSI to SD/CF card adapters that are relatively cheap. For MFM/RLL though, the price shoots up substantially. I found one such board with a quick google search, but it's $270
www.drem.info/
Though for all of the functionality it offers, I'd say its well worth the cost.
Besides the board GGigabiteM refered to there is also www.pdp8online.com/mfm/. Similar functionality. And I doubt much cheaper if you include the beaglebone.
I don't see any point in making a interface to mate an SD or CF card with an MFM/RLL controller. Skip the MFM/RLL controller and interface to the bus directly.
@@BlackEpyon Considering the massive number of different machines that used MFM/RLL, that makes the least amount of sense. You'd have to make dozens of different interfaces for every machine and write the software for all of them.
Easier and less expensive to make an MFM/RLL emulator and work out the slight controller differences in software.
@@GGigabiteM Firmware, not software. Software doesn't need to know what kind of data storage it's using, only what address it can be found at. But the interface is less of an issue than the underlying system architecture. Mac architecture of that era was considerably different from PC architecture, as Mac and PC were from Commodore, where towards Commodore's end they were indistinguishable from PC, and Apple these days practically IS PC with a more expensive wrapper. As long as the architecture is similar, all you need is an adapter to change the interface.
Put the craziness back together, don't go back to stock
Hi Adrian, I am a fellow Oregonian. The old power supply that doesn't start up is usually the Electrolylic capacitors that are dried up, replacing them usually fixes the power up problem. Sometimes there is a power good line that needs to be enabled to start up the supply. Their are many Tech channels that are showing how to fix these power supplies, IE Paul Carlson , (Mr Carlsons Lab), 12voltvids, w2aew, Jim Lindenas, and others. Good luck from Ray Burke
Leave it as is, though you should get another PSU for the hard drive. The upgrade is period correct.
512K Macs came with 800K drives, and you need to check the ROMs to see if it is HFS (Hierarchical File System) or MFS (Macintosh File System). Since it is using a rare System 5, it looks to me to be HFS.
HyperDrive used to make external SCSI Drives for the Plus and SE / SE\30s and even had an internal SCSI HD for the Mac Plus long ago as well as rebanding internal SCSI drives for the SE / SE\30 and Mac II Line.
Look at the side of the board, there should be steps on one side so you can pull the board out a tiny bit for the steps to line up and then open it like a swinging door. You should close it the same way.
If anything, check out the Analog Board and clean up/replace any bad solder you find and check the connectors for burn marks.
12:10 I love the sound that hard drive makes as it starts up. It should be the startup sound to a computer
THANK YOU! You saved my Applied Engineering Vulcan 40MB MFM Western Digital drive! I have one of these in my original owner Apple //e and when I brought it out of 30 year storage the drive would not spin up. I bought exactly the lubricant that you showed/mentioned and to my delight the drive spun up after putting it on an external power supply. Amazing!
Keep it as-is! Even though an MFM drive on a platform that was historically known to use SCSI for a very long time seems weird, I'd still keep it as-is. Consider it like the Mac equivalent to the IBM 5160 XT.
You are thinking of the Mac Plus - earlier all-in-ones didn't have SCSI. There was an unofficial weird external hard drive that plugged into the external floppy port though...
Except it wasnt unofficial. it was called the Apple HD20. But you needed the enhanced ROMs to natively boot it. Otherwise you had to have a boot disk to load the driver before it transferred control over to the hard drive.
Hearing that MFM drive spin up brought back so many memories.
That drive setup is cool as hell! I love period aftermarket mods like this. Keep it together! Also look into doing the caps on the analog board, it may be a little slow to warm up with old caps.
I had a Mac 512K, with a _2 MB RAM and SCSI port_ upgrade.
Thanks for the memories.
Leave it a the way it is, adding upgrades to these machines in that era was common due to the speed of development.
My dad had a Macintosh II back in about 1989, it came originally with a 40MB HD and 4MB of RAM, that was increased to 8MB of RAM later. In about 1991 the logic board was swapped out for the IIx version, and had dual 1.44MB floppy drives added, as well as upping the RAM to 16MB, it had a special graphics card fitted for the monitor which was a 21" if I remember rightly. Also had the apple scanner and laser writer II printer. it was used for desktop publishing at the time, it was quite an investment !
I sold that machine for just NZ$50 about 15 years ago, and it was still working!
I still have the full set of System 7.0 / 7.1 in its original box that was used with that machine,
Only just discovered your channel and I am loving your old Macintosh discoveries! Reminds me when I have discovered accelerator cards hiding in modest Macintosh SEs before :-)
Definitely leave it as it is. That MFM drive in a Mac is really cool!
Leave it as is.
Keep it as is! It's so rare to see late 1980s Macs running off of an HDD... in an era when it was mainly floppy boot.
@Adrian Black
The Mac 512k was originally available with both types of floppy drives. The higher capacity drive was an optional upgrade. About the HDD, like the Mac128, that is an authentic upgrade. Keep it! It's a very cool aspect of that computer! The first boot corruption problem is actually the way those upgrades worked BITD. The early upgrades required the reset be pressed manually because the HDD needed time to spin up. Not all of the HDD upgrades did that. Later versions paused the system boot long enough to account for the spin up time. This quirk is actually authentic as well. Do your thing fixing it up, but keep it as is. It'll be a wonderful show-case and conversation piece!
Another amazing video. Thanks Adrian!
Keep the crazy MFM internal drive! That seems so wild that it would be a crime to undo it.
Disclaimer: Don't take this the wrong way! It's something we're _all_ guilty of. I just want to clear up any fog left lingering when it comes to the seemingly endless acronyms and definitions used in the world of computing. Many of you probably already know this and perhaps even the author himself, however the habit has become so pervasive that it's often never given a thought.
For years, and perhaps not really incorrectly you often hear older ST-506/ST-412 drives being referred to by the encoding method that they use. Almost every ST-506/ST-412 that you run into uses RLL (Run Length-Limited) with either FM or MFM encoding schemes. MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation) is merely a particular type of encoding scheme as opposed to FM (Frequency Modulation) where there are differences in density.
P.S. Don't remove the hard disk modification! Very cool.
"My Pappy said son you're gonna drive me to drinkin' if you don't stop drivin' that hotrod.... Macintosh." Once again, a vintage hotrod is cool... even if it's a bit inelegant and not ready for "Mac-o-Rama." It still hauls ass in a retro kinda way.
You are stumbling upon some fun computer adventures and it makes me jelly but at the same time I am learning more about old systems and I love it 😊
Keep the hard drive in this mac and great video as always
Wow, what a find. That has to be a pretty rare mod. I would for sure keep it as these mods back then where pretty unique.
Keep the hard drive ! You keep finding all the unique macs
Keep it as is. The curiosity factor with the MFM drive makes it more interesting. If this was a commonly known drop-in feature, I'd think differently.
Definitely keep it as-is! Watching you take this beast apart was an adventure unto itself.
KEEP THE HYPERDRIVE! That's totally badass, this is a 1337 Mac.
The craziness is what makes it! Amazing find. Keep this the way it is
Wow, Adrian, this was so cool to see! I couldn't believe it when it came to life!
You should absolutely put that back the way it was! It is time period correct and it's a very neat job and it makes the machine so much more useful.
The old Mac lover in me says “revert it back” but I like the way you tinker (improve) things so I say keep as you got it! New subscriber and I love your vids!
Yeah, but think of it this way. It's not terribly difficult to find stock 512Ks even though they are getting on in years. But finding ones modded back in the day, with those mods still working? It's kinda nice to preserve that history as well.
I'm surprised the Mac doesn't tip over from the gyroscopic forces of a mid 80s MFM drive!! Wow what a neat surprise
ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!! Definitively keep it as it is!
Do you really think that the power supply is "too slow". It should start up in some milliseconds. Or is it the HDD? Does someone knows if that's "normal" behaviour? Regards Doktor64!
Wow what a find! Twice I have tried buy Mac 512k's and have always had issues with dodgy sellers...and here you have two of them! What a surprise to see this HDD setup! I am guessing that this was a very very early modification to address the lack of an internal HDD in the Mac 512k. You did a great job getting it apart and changing the power supply. I would just leave it the way it is currently and just enjoy it whilst the MFM HDD is still functional.After that fails then put it back to stock.
Keep it as it is! Got to love these old school mods.
This was such a fascinating video! I have a pretty large collection of macs and I always find it amazing when there is something in there that is out of the ordinary. Image, a hard drive in a classic mac? SO cool. If I were you, I would put it back together (after you fix that power supply glitch) and run it with the hard drive. It would seem somebody put an awful lot of work into it. I'm thinking it's a rare animal! GREAT video!
Keep the crazy, it's awesome! These period mods are amazing, before things just fit together like little legos.
This is just too cool to be put back to stock!!
Plus it'd be lots of fun getting it all working smoothly , powering stuff on time and such ! :)
I love your videos, Adrian. Thanks for cheering me up.
ALSO, definitely make a SuperMac!
For goodness sake man, KEEP IT LIKE THAT! Period correct mods are really freaking cool!
General Computer Corporation made a US$2,795 Hyperdrive hard drive for the Mac, they also made a 2 meg upgrade. You have a period correct computer for the more wealthier of users.
I just gasped at 14:29 because you just said you weren't gonna touch the supply and then it cut to you holding it. Took a sec to realize it was unplugged. lol
Looking forward to seeing it up and running that supermac magic. Great video!!
gotta keep it the way it is, this is screeming old school mod and those are always fun to find. If anything I would say keep working on the power supply to get it (or another one) that can provide voltage fast enough to have it boot properly without a reset. Super fun video and great find.
Keep the drive, it's part of the machines history.
This is an awesome demonstration of the kinds of ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking hardware engineers gave us back in the day! I'd say get it back together with the MFM drive intact, and bonus if you can get the original PSU working. I also echo what others have said about capturing the data off the drive so that the drivers and whatnot can be preserved for posterity (and anyone else who might run across a machine with this upgrade)
Now THERE'S something you don't see everyday! I'm still trying to get my Mac Plus to boot from a SCSI2SD adapter I have mounted in an external SCSI HD enclosure. It recognizes it and can access it, but it won't boot from it. People have told me it is likely needing a ROM upgrade. I'm also lacking a terminator, so it may be two-fold. Cool machines, man!
Keep it as it is, a rare example of what was available, also see if you can image/backup that drive, never know when you find an old piece of software that disks/downloads dont exist anymore
It’s too unique to put back to stock. What a gem, keep it as is.
Leave this thing the way it is! Its really cool and it tells a cool story!
The Mac 512 was my family's first Mac back in the 80s. My dad decided to use a external harddrive instead of a internal one like this one. It was a large sucker. I think I still have it too. A whole 40 megs.
I wonder if the mods will make this Mac harder to preserve? Also, can you replace the 10MB disk with a modern solid state MFM adapter? It would be cool to honor the custom MFM board while updating the actual disk to something quieter.
I'd cut out the middle man and pull out the MFM adapter to preserve as a museum piece if you plan on putting in solid-state storage.
I’d leave the real drive in there. Who doesn’t like the sound of a stepper-motor drive? And it would be absolutely bonkers in my opinion to pull a fully-functional and period-correct MFM drive out just to put a modern solid-state solution in there. That drive has lasted over 3-decades already, so I think it’ll likely continue to work for years to come.
That is awesome. Worth keeping around just because it’s so uncommon, I think.
Plus it sounds like you know your way around MFM drives, so you can keep it going.
I had an Amiga 2000HD that had an MFM/RLL 20MB hard drive in it and when that died, I remember buying a Seagate 85MB - 5 1/4" Hard drive for $475 which was in the 90's was a lot and its still a lot today for a hard drive :)
Keep the hard drive!
Hi Adrian,
Once again an extremely well-made video which I found quite enjoyable. I really like your restoration projects on eighties and nineties hardware so keep it coming! As for your question, call me crazy but again I'd like to vote for "keep it". Why? Because I (again) think the upgrade is time-appropriate. MFM harddrives are ancient and this one not only works but boots too! That's special in and of itself; I've worked on numerous IBM PC XTs and if they have an MFM harddrive, most of the time, the thing is broken! That's it for my 5 cents, keep up the good work & thanks again for your videos!
-Daan
can't go back now man, let the mac-beast live
That is very cool! Back it up, and keep it how it is. You might want to take a hint from the previous owner and add a fan though.. I think there were third party add-on ones that mounted on the outside of the case somewhere for some of the early macs, but maybe that was more SE era.. i don't recall for sure.
That old drive spinning up could almost be the modern Mac startup sound.
I just love these little computers. I would love to own one just to play some old games.
Stiction is definitely a commonly used term within the industry. I don't know if it was official, but it was certainly taught in the training sessions for those building hard drives at IBM.
I would love to see an image of that hard drive dumped somewhere! Keep it as is!
When I buy old macs off ebay, I'm almost more excited about the aftermarket upgrades and nubus cards than the computer itself.
Dude, Keep the drive on that mac! That mac is awesome!
Please keep it as it is. Probably you should do a backup from the MFM.
If you want, you could change the HDD against something with more disk space.
I'm quite jealous about this little "power mac".
Anyways, great content, glad to be a subscriber to your channel!
Put it all back together! There's plenty of stock machines out there, this is a living snapshot of a machine that was well used and loved.
This is amazing. I have never seen that kind of setup.
keeping it as it and repair as needed to run correctly is my vote...
Cheers
I seen one of these in a school recently, it had similar issues starting up, they were going to bin it - might pop along Monday and see if its wanting a new home. I think keep yours as is, and also backup the data for historic value.
You should totally try to make it work again. It's very unique, and it'd be a shame to loose that.
Keep it as it is. It's a unique computer with history from a different era. There are plenty of stock but only one as that one.
So many of us put extra ram, hard drives changed the 400k floppy to 800k ones... and FileMaker, amazing how that database is still around and lively! (I program with it every single day...)
As a student I used to upgrade others Mac to 2 or 4 meg of RAM. Then some apps you'd load in a ram disk, making the machine pretty fast.
Put this cool rig back together! I would love to see it.
Make it a Vundermac! Seriously this just gets better and better :)
Keep it as is!
Definitely keep the drive! That's an amazing mod!
This is really cool. Leave it the way it is.
keep it as is and what cool find can't wait to get my mac Se/30 up and running
Cool, I think I might have such a drive lying around that was still working when I shelved it in the late 90's.
Whatever you do, you should make an image of those EPROMS! A cheap $50 eBay TL866II Plus Programmer will do the trick. I'd get in a habit of doing that on all your old computers. There will come a day when the EPROMS *WILL* lose their contents, and then you will need a copy to burn a new one. It would be a great service to your viewers if you posted a copy of the EPROMS you find so if someone else runs across one of the HyperVisor cards with a bad EPROM, they can fix theirs. Anyway, my vote is to keep all the mods the original owner did, it's always nice to see all the hard work someone did to make the machine they wanted and not just be happy with the stock unit. A true hacker and maker owned that machine back in the day!
Sweet T-Shirt Adrian! Gave this a thumbs up 3 seconds in, just because of the T-shirt. I'm sure the project is cool too.