I found a bad smt cap on the floppy drive - it’s a bear to replace, but should be done. I just cracked open an OEM Contura NiCad pack and plan on repacking it with new cells - it’s a straight-forward rebuild with no internal logic controls.
When backing up vintage SCSI macs, I used to use an external drive with a basic bootable OS, then just... drag and drop the contents of the drive into a folder on the external drive... Easy peasy. You'll need to use the startup disk selector tool (I forgot what it was called, but I believe it's...
Another thing for me is if I even SUSPECT a bad capacitor and I need to pull it out of circuit to test it, it's getting replaced. Reason being, if it didn't leak BEFORE being subject to the heat of a soldering iron after 35 years, it'll certainly leak now! If I'm going through the trouble to...
I recap only when, during a visual inspection, I find any traces of electrolyte leaking from the caps - just a slight amount of discoloration on the leads and I remove them. Often, if I'm already there, I'll proceed to recap the entire board (or at least the larger caps). I once proactively...
There's a Contura 3/25 on eBay RIGHT NOW by the way! Yeah, the 286 models are not nearly as desireable - I only bought my T3200SX because I had one as a kid and I missed that machine enough to pay $300 for a dead one! It's a shame so many of these were destroyed... the one I had suffered a drive...
Shockingly, at least on mine, the plastic isn't brittle at all. I preemptively reinforced the hinges with self-mixing epoxy and plastic welded a few hairline cracks, but other than that, she's rock-solid!
Heat it with a hair dryer, and used a black stick to gently work it free from a corner - then SLOWLY peel it off, be careful not to bend it too much, and do not crease it. It will go right back on like it never happened without much fuss if done right.
I paid $300 for a dead one... just needed a replacement HDD, caps on the display, and an overall cleaning - but yeah, these things are getting HOT!! I got lucky on the drive (I have a STRICT "NO SSD/CF ADAPTER" rule on my vintage systems), I had a good used Conner on-hand. Hope yours is working...
Been a member here for over a decade but I lost access to my account years ago! So I figured I'd jump back in under a new account. Here's a list of my machines as of right now:
-Apple IIGS
-Macintosh LC III
-Macintosh Classic
-Macintosh SE FDHD
-Macintosh iMac (Rev. B) "Bondi"
-Macintosh iBook...