Restoring a (Literal) Rats' Nest Macintosh IIci
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- This Apple Mac IIci was stored in a garage or attic and ended up with rodents living in it. Can I get this absolutely filthy retro computer from 1989 working again?
Mac floppy drive restoration walkthrough: • Repairing and Restorin...
BlueSCSI: scsi.blue
Sources:
MacUser, November 1989.
Byte, October 1989.
Computerworld, October 9, 1989.
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Music by
Epidemic Sound (www.epidemicso...).
Intro music by BoxCat Games (www.box-cat.com).
Hey Colin - I've been a subscriber for quite some time, but I've never commented on a video of yours to my knowledge. Though I couldn't help but mention that the content you bless us with every week is just perpetually incredible. There's something about the excellent cinematography and your evidently astounding volume of knowledge about these old machines that has made your channel among my favorites. Coming back to my dorm after classes on Fridays and watching your uploads is always a treat. Thanks for your continued effort, man; your laborious attention to detail is seriously appreciated!
That SD to SCSI adapter is so cool, I'm glad little tools like that is able to remain open source
Hey Colin - One of the things I've learned from watching Adrian's Digital Basement is that the Mac IIs use a "Sync on Green" video signal that differs from what a standard VGA monitor is usually expecting. Not sure if your adapter or monitor accounts for this, but if neither does, then a vanilla VGA monitor won't understand what to do with the video signal the Mac II is outputting.
Assuming he's using the OSSC (he mentioned a "scaler"), it'll handle that just fine.
Huh i remember when i bought my Mitsubishi Diamondtron CRT in the late 90s, it had one of those exact Apple adapters in the kit and the monitor specs said Sync On Green support in the monitor. Not sure why i remember that, and not that that's relevant. Anyway the adapter dongle doesn't have a sync extractor then. But he used this whole setup with Macs before, so by all reason, the issue really was the odd signal timing as he said, maybe horizontal refresh rate out of range.
We restore Macs on the daily. Sometimes these old boards just don't want to work. I have a Classic II that just refuses to work. We just restored a LC II, LC 575 and have a bunch of cool stuff on the bench ready for restoration like a IICX, IIX and some laser printer boards. You did great though, happy to see it working!
Very satisfying clean-up. Those rodents will use whatever they can find and this was a secure nest. As I am the type of guy that thinks retro tools such as a computer should be as close to the original as possible, with all its pros and cons, it's a bit heartbreaking to see something modern as a BlueSCSI module. However, I can understand the alternative here, as those mechanical SCSI drives are, as you mentioned, rare and often expensive. Also, the substitute module addition is fully reversible so the ”damage” is not permanent. A very solid restoration effort - a nice rescue! Thanks for the video.
No reason to be that authentic unless you are going to exhibit the machine in a museum, working SCSI disks that’ll suit a vintage Mac are rare, expensive, noisy, slow and prone to failure. Same goes with CD-ROM drives. It may be authentic to use a 1x or 2x drive with a vintage computer, but life is too short to wait for loading times on such a slow optical drive these days
We used these in my high school print-shop even in the late 90s.
Those star stickers immediately made me think this was a school machine.
Man you are pretty brave talking on this project! If I could of smelled that thing I would have tossed it out, I can't stand rodents. Densely looks like a biohazard. But it looks like you got it cleaned up at least 200% better and no retrobrite! Nice!
My grandmother had a couple of these. I remember learning to use computers on them. She was still using them until like 2010.
Those stars are actually factory. Mr Jobs was on a binge that week at the design meetings.
Throughout my childhood in the 1990s I've had (access to) 3 Macs... a Mac Plus, a Mac IIci, and a Power Mac 8500/120. The subject of this video, the Mac IIci, means a lot to me because it was a hand-me-down from my dad when he get the aforementioned Power Mac 8500 (of which I now have again, but that's not for this comment...) I was around 12 or 13, and it was my first ever computer that was mine, though my brother used it some too. I fondly remember spending countless hours playing SimCity 2000 and other such titles of that time. Thank you for this video, Colin. Awesome restoration too! That was indeed satisfying as others here have put it, and hearing you go "OMG YES" when things unexpectedly worked was entertaining too! I do the same when working on stuff that's misbehaving! Cheers!
Same with the omg yes and I have had access to a 2007 & 2008 polycarbonate MacBook and 2012 non unibody mbp and late 2013 mbp and had access to a 2020 mba which suuuuucks
9:26 clipping leads after soldering is a defect in all classes. Brilliant.
I seem to recall, now remember this is going back 30 years, that the Iici did get a performance benefit from running a nubus graphics card, and not just for graphics. This I think had to do with the way system memory and video memory were shared, as well as offloading graphics operations from the CPU. These are great machines. I used to refer to them as the 5.0 liter Mustang of Macintoshes.
That was a great restoration project and an excelent video. Loved every second of it.
A humbling, and rewarding, experience. Restoration is an art and science, and series of experiments.
I forgot *research* and some correspondence, discussion boards, and so on.
this is exactly why i clean anything i get used even if it looks in mint condition on the outside
The joy in your voice when the computer clicked on!
I love you're channel...so much great info.
It's always a good day when new TDNC content drops!
As usual, most excellent work, Colin.
Well that was amazingly amazing. I really appreciate the time and attention given to such quality and editing productions.
Pretty inspirational video as there's a couple of disassembled IIci's here that, unfortunately, I did not clean up and stored them in a closet that (most unfortunately) has a humidity problem if not properly vented. One of them is toast, the other chimed but the HD is dead - lots of corrosion from the PRAM battery that spread to the floppy and power supply. Bummed about that but the cases cleaned up well and are serving as storage libraries for floppy and Zip discs.
Got a good speaker for one of these and its yours if you want. I can leave it at Retro in FreeGeek as it's real close to my house.
Nice machine. I hope one day to be able to add a Mac II of some kind to my hoard.
That was very impressive, not only restoration, but even upgrade! 👍
6:51 - Ah, yes: some good ol' Rifa madness!
That's terrible, Muriel!
That was a cool video, man. It still makes me shudder anytime any kind of liquid is used to submerged electronics. I’d seen vids where people put the mother boards in a dish washer! Hard to see how distilled water could be used in THAT lol.
I was half expecting a dead rat inside the case. Thank goodness I was wrong!
The price of this machine back in the day makes the Mac Studio look like an insane bargain!
Just ordered a BlueSCSI kit to fix my SE! I’ve been waiting for a cheap solution for a long time
I bought one of these machines in late 89 or early 90 with a certified developer discount, 24mb of ram, and a 214mb HD... as well as a daystar digital fastcache... and a radius pivot display and video card. i loved that machine... it was replaced by a macintosh cube in the fall of 2000
Cool! Still have it? You can sell for a lot of money
Great work.
Funny enough, a lot of Power Macs had a similar issue with a cold boot with a fresh battery, my 7600 had that issue when I first got it and plugged it in with a standard display, as I had a secondary VGA card, but it really wanted to know a display was on the onboard display, so I got at the time, an adapter for older macs that tricks the mac into thinking it has a normal Apple display, and that worked.
I would of filled the tub with hot water and poured that entire bottle in and let it soak for a while with all that rat residue for the case.
Love your videos. Been a subscriber for a few years now. Great content 👍
Ugh
A “Chernobyl casual” dress code would have been more suited for this task.
You are brave.
"A next level of dust" Dust 2.0?!
Great video, Colin.
working via the microSD card as a HDD might help.
This was my dram machine circa 1990 and I saved money to buy one finally getting one in early 1992. Unfortunately Apple came out with the quarda line soon after and my poor 2ci was a joke till I finally retired it when I got my 9500 model so I could start building websites. I took my 2ci home but it was so slow that it ended up in the attic storage area since by 1995 it was a paperweight.
amazing and very impressive work and video! very cool!
What an amazing transformation
Wow, I haven’t seen one of these since 1993 when I first started designing books on a computer. It was quite a feat for all of us designers on staff to learn how to operate a computer. We had to share computers because they were so expensive.
Bump the hard drive against a table. Just hold the drive on it’s side and drop one corner from about an inch directly against a hard table. My drive acted like yours. One bump and it’s been working for years. All my data was recovered. Last used about 11 years ago.
I'm surprised that mice didn't eat the speaker had a radio/turntable that sat under a pile of stuff in a shed for 20+ years, speaker cones were thoroughly eaten away and even paper insulation on transformers was scratched and chewed on in places
Underrated channel this
I have the same IIci computer found it, cleaned the board the same way as your video, but nothing, but I think it will need Cap recplacement. Your video inspired me to try another round with it. Cheers
Very nice. Makes me want to dig mine out of the closet.
Nice to know about the SCSI alternative. I'll definitely need one of those.
You have to upgrade. The machine.
Hi Colin! Love the vids. Don’t leave me in suspense though! Were you ever able to address the speaker issue? Happy new year!
When I worked in a repro department one of these got relegated to the image setter as a rip after we got G3’s. To the best of my knowledge it was never shut down in the years I used it.
15:00 This is very true sadly. I lost the SCSI in my 1986 Toshiba T3100e/40 and on ebay the replacements are pretty $$$.
Well I am very suprized it worked too.... i take my hat off to ya.
Colin, please, next time *wear gloves* when handling filthy stuff like this. You don't know the diseases you can catch, especially considering excrement residue.
YES! Just imagine if you'd nicked yourself on anything! I find it very hard to watch these repair videos if the hosts don't wear gloves. My vivid imagination of what could happen makes me have to look away....
Also, I really hope you put on a mask!!
Wtf i think you guys are overreacting
@@nathanrye
They are not overreacting
They are right, if he got contaminated, he could've died!
So please don't say that.
It could also be the speaker's amp chip. Sometimes speakers have separate circuitry from audio out jacks. You could test the speaker by hooking it up to something else. Hopefully it's just a bad speaker though.
That is such a cool computer!
I don’t know why but that video card gave me big time nostalgia. I miss computers like this. When I have the room for it, I definitely need to do something like this.
It's over $9,000!
I had a feeling it would work.
Great vid, really enjoyed that resto!
Pure upgrade and refurbishment porn.
Can't believe I was alive at a time that Apple actually had easy-to-work-on and modular setups for their PCs.
If you lightly sand down yellowed plastic it usually goes back to its original colour
$10k in 1989 dollars is crazy. Who had the money for that?
These rats "thought different!" :) They spawned a litter of print and web designers :)
When I restore mine, I also had sound issues, but the jack was still working, I had damaged one trace from recapping (or it was damaged from the leaked cap)
Nice! I'm picking up a 'non-working' Macintosh LC setup for $30 this weekend, hope it's just the PRAM battery.
Awesome, good luck! Let us know how it goes 😁
I’m in Minneapolis but haven’t been to Free Geek yet. Need to fix that soon!
that radius needs an IPA soak too
Geez dude, I got an ancient IIcx I'd love to get going again, but I don't have half the technical skill you do. I do know there are services out there that handle stuff like this though.
yeah a 4gb drive\sd card is a MASSIVE upgrade from a 80mb drive
First computer I touched. Learned to type as a 5 year old on one.
I think that the No signal issues you got from the lcd was because the Mac iici outputs sync on green video and as you know most lcds and scalers hate sync on green
Awesome and detailed video as usual.
Was my first Mac.
That fucking intro kills me each time lmao
I once reconditioned for sale an IBM 5150 PC that came to be referred to as "The Rat Shit PC". Believe it or not it worked just fine after probably two pounds of rat shit and nests were removed.
Hi Colin, I love your channel. You have a superb voiceover.
Is there anywhere I can find some of the music tracks you use in your videos? I'd love to put together a driving playlist with some of these.
I have a Toshiba with the same age. The small elcos with a black section are splendid quality and I guess it is not necessary to replace those. E. g. I have measured the ECR of those caps, and ithey were okay,. and the power supply ripples is in mV range, at least a factor ten better than specs.
The Macintosh would have an orgasm going from 80 MB to 4 GB.
And any programmer in the 90s.
Hopefully no one smokes the RIFA anytime soon in this PC... Man those things are terrible.
Great video! I would love to get my hands on such a machine.
I have found an IIcx and tried to clean it. Have been watching your video it's really well made. I would love to watch more details, it is actually the best video I have found about this machine on TH-cam. I have not tried to assemble new capacitors as I did not get any electricity on the fan. if you measure the volts on the contact of the fan do you get 12V out?
Only thing left to complete this awesome restore is to use hydrogen peroxide on the casing to get rid of that yellowing :)
in the wikipedia page of the Macintosh IIci it says there is an easter egg: "An easter egg exists in the IIci ROM. If the system date is set to September 20, 1989 (the machine's release date) and the ⌘ Command + ⌥ Option + C + I keys are held during boot time, an image of the development team will be displayed."
Also, you should have Retrobright the case, but great video nevertheless.
6:55 *Tries to hold laugh* ... XDDDDDD THOSE CAPS ARE KINDA *SUS*
I love that soldering workholding station , I have the same one . Having so many arms really helps . I do wish the base was a bit heavier but it’s really not a issue. It’s well made and in theory will last forever because the arms are really cheap and easy to replace !
if EEVlog saw those Rifa capacitors! XD
I would love to see a video installing A/UX on that!
15:18
Those solder joints are absolutely atrocious! Wow! 😮
I guess the alcohol math will dry the electrolytic caps, so you needed to replace them anyway, even if they were new. :)
And regarding the black screen.... I am a PC user since the 80286, and the POST beep codes were always really useful. The MAC does not have something similar?
Wonderful restoration!
What's the name of the song playing @ 8:20 ??
I have the same problem with my Macintosh II 256-color video card, it does not work on any adapter and any lcd, except my Benq BL702.
Please check that with the IIci too.
You should have removed that RIFA cap even if you can't replace it right away. It's likely just a mains smoothing cap and will really stink up your house if it blows up.
Gloves! PLEASE!!
A trick for heat sensitive parts would be putting a coin or something metal on top of them as a heat spreader.
@This Does Not Compute -
where a mouse / rat head fits trough , the rest of the animal fits too & they love undisturbed places (incl. pipe channels in walls) ...
I remember, I found an old windows 98 pc and I made a mistake by immediately turning it on without checking the inside, and guess what, the Rifa Capacitor popped with a lot of smoke (and that happened in my bedroom lmao)
"OH NO WA!" Indeed
the case certainly needs some retro-brighting.... check out the 8 bit guy
1:25 Please tell me that worker had the ESD strap on his ankle...
I had a Macintosh IIci once, but it had no sound also... sadly, I had to let it go.
Pretty from a more experienced deruriner: normal sink water dish soap & a toothbrush. If you want to be more spotcleaney simply spit right onto the board; your human enzymes will break things down. Either way, rinse with distilled & immediately rinse again with isopropynol.
Yeah no yeah I'm still seeing piss try my way it's better cmonnnn I deurinism'd a gtx 990 once
I recently found a 1996 Performa 6400/180 in the trash. It needs some caps replaced, but I can't use hot air to release the old caps because a heat gun blows my circuit. Is there a problem removing the caps with a soldering iron? Also, where's the best place to buy capacitors? Thanks for this video. It'll help with my restoration.