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Macintosh Classic pick-up at recycling center

V

VintageVic

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 9, 2019
Messages
340
Location
Finland
Hi all, it's been a while since my last post.

I stumbled upon on a surprising find today at local recycling center.
A Macintosh Classic! I have never had/used any Mac and I know next to nothing
about them. Still, you don't see these every day here and I was immediately very
interested. 100 euro price tag let me doubt for 15 minutes though. It does not even
have a keyboard, but luckily a mouse was with it. I was thinking what to do about it and then
it occured to me that I could turn it on and see if there is something on the screen to figure out if it
is worth the price tag. Sure enough, the computer booted - even without any errors on screen,
but right to the OS and then I decided that it's a deal!

Along came a PC for 15 euro, perhaps a P1 that you see on the first picture, but that's a story for another topic.

At home I turned it on again. I needed to google, where to plug the mouse - I did not want to try to put it
to a wrong port and possibly damage something. I got it right, booted the mac and found out that the mouse is
also working fine!

The computer seems to have many games in it. Sorry about the menu, OS language is in Finnish.
In the 6th picture I can see that it has "23293K containing disk" and "15 759K free", so I figure it
must have 23 MB hard drive. It sounds normal to a small old HD.

I don't know if the floppy drive works (or even if it exist inside the case).

Is the floppy format compatible with IBM PC format, 720k ...probably at least not compatible with 1.44MB ?
What is the simplest way of putting new media to a Mac, if the format is not compatible with a PC ?

Well, my first concern may not be to add media, but to find a keyboard to the Mac. They said at the
recycling center that they might have the keyboard there... somewhere. So, I will keep visiting the near
weeks there, though I don't keep too much hope up to finding it there. Even if it is there, someone else
might pick it up before I see it again.

Curiosity in the back of the Mac: Manufactured november 1990.

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Nice Find!

This is a Macintosh Classic circa 1990-1992 outfitted with the Apple SuperDrive Floppy, which is capable of reading 1.44mb disks in addition to 400k and 800k old world mac floppy formats. A PC (such as the one next to it) should be able to read these 1.44mb floppies with additional software such as HFSExplorer. The keyboard needs to be one with an ADB Bus Connector, such as used on all Mac's of the era, it has the same connector as the mouse. You can genuine apple boards on ebay and the like but they are quite expensive usually as they contain Alps switches which are harvested by the custom keyboard community, driving the price up. You could likely find a third party rubber dome keyboard like a Kensington for less. Another option would be the USB Wombat which is a device that lets you use USB mice and keybaords on the ADB bus and vice versa. I have one but never got it to work but I seem to be in the minority.

Some things to consider replacing/upgrading would be the SCSI hard drive to a SCSI2SD Adapter, replacing the capacitors on the logic and analog boards and replacing the PRAM battery. Remember that the unit is 30 years old and the battery especially is a ticking time bomb that will eventually leak and destroy the board.

Happy Mac'ing!
 
Thanks for your comments and advices Ignatio!

I ordered a lot of 3 ADB bus keyboards from ebay. They are very dirty and sold as defective (not tested), hopefully I can clean and
get at least one of them to work with the Mac.

I have to open the case and remove the old battery. At least that is a must do.
Must keep in mind to be extra cautious for possible remnant of high voltage in that analog board.
 
post a pic of the board and battery so we can see its condition. I never came across one in recent years that wasn't totaled by battery leakage.
 
Battery leakage doesn't happen that often. I'm collecting Macs for 20+ years now and only lost a single PowerMac 7100 because of a leaked battery. If the system still works, the battery is not leaked - so just remove it and you're good.

The SMD caps in the Classic are more problematic. They must be replaced, no matter if there is visible damage or not.
 
Im going to disagree. It happens quite often. I have a basement full of macs besides what I keep in my acutal "collections" from compact macs to more modern power pc's they have battery leakage problems. Not to mention how that is compounded by SMD capacitors leaking, they are just not long for this world. And I know its all subjective but I have never come across a mac classic that wasn't ruined by battery damage save for the color mac classic I own which did have extensive capacitor leaking which I did clean and fix.
 
It's the half size AA batteries that are the real time bombs, the cylindrical ones. The wire lead ones are not as bad but still capable of DOOM.
 
It's really only specific brands that are susceptible to leaking, like Varta. I have a pile of 30+ year old 1/2 AA Tadiran clock batteries that have never leaked, and some even still hold a useful charge.

The 4.5v Rayovac bricks used on Power Macintosh machines are alkaline pile cells and do have a problem with leaking if stored in a non-climate controlled environment.
 
Different strokes I guess, I have an SE FDHD board that I had to rewire a dozen traces manually with wires because of an impatient purple Tadiran. It probably has more to do with storage conditions but you can't be too careful, they aren't making more of these machines after all.
 
Thanks for your comments, everyone!

I'm in the middle of moving process and have not yet opened the mac up. But I intend to do so, to remove the old
battery.

However, I got some new (old) goodies from mail yesterday and I had to try them out.
Three keyboards from UK, sold as defect. I was hoping that maybe one of them would work - or perhaps I could
fix them. They cost me about 50 euro, shipping included. In this case I preferred price+practicality over originality.

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So, I tried out this one, that looked least dirty to me:
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It is working with most of the keys, but letters 3, e, d and c are not working. I'm thinking, perhaps
a corroded trace inside, because they make a straight line on the keyboard. Probably one line in the key matrix
is not working ?

No time to open it up now, so I gave the most dirty one a shot:
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And it seems to be fully functional! Yesss, me likey =).
The third one is completely dead. But it's okay, since I got one working unit here.

Applied some water, cleaning solution and wiping to it:
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There is some degree of yellowing and to get it really clean, I should probably remove all the
keys and wash them individually. But at least it is clean enough to touch now.

Makes me wonder... perhaps these have been in some factory condition ? I have not seen
such dirty units before.
 
It's always a surprise just how much filth can accumulate in storage alone.

My cleaning path with a KB like this would be to remove all key caps, open the board and remove PCB. Scrub PCB with the purest rubbing alcohol you can find. Any membranes or rubber dome sheets are gently washed with a q-tip and soapy water. Dishwasher on gentle setting or hand wash with dish soap (great for grease) for case. Keys get soaked in dish soap and water for an hour or so then cleaned by hand with toothbrush. If plastic dirt is especially stubborn then scrub with a paste of water and baking soda. Then all yellowed plastics take a bath in a black plastic Rubbermaid tote with a retro-bright solution of hot water and 40 strength salon developer (works better for me than hydrogen peroxide but results may vary) covered with transparent plastic under the sun. Agitate the solution every ten or twenty minutes to remove bubbles and expose all surfaces to the UV. After a few hours (depending on exposure and temperature) remove and rinse your new white parts. Reassemble and enjoy the experience.

Cleaning the switches if they are mechanical is a whole other thing.
 
I see keyboards in that condition all the time, they get that way from being left out in non-climate controlled storage, like a shed or garage.

The yellowing can be taken care of with peroxide, you'll need some higher strength stuff than the 3% stuff that is sold in the pharmacy though. There's something called "salon care 40 volume clear developer", which is a 13% peroxide solution. It's stupid expensive online, I'd recommend getting it from a beauty supply store, like Sally Beauty.

Here's a gallon of it on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TP1IZDE/

Pull all of the keys off and clean them well, then put them in a clear tote and carefully pour enough peroxide in so they're submerged. Then cover the container with plastic wrap and put it outside for a couple of hours. If the keys start to float, you may have to stick them to the bottom of the container with something, or try putting them in a bag with peroxide and try to keep the air out.
 
I have been curious about trying out the retro-bright solution. However, at least the near months
there is limited/no natural UV source here in Finland :). I'd have to acquire UV source for it as well.
It also seems, that we need police permit for posessing stronger than 12% peroxide here in Finland.

While I think about what to try out, I opened the keyboard that has no 3, e, d or c key functions.

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I asked the previous owner about any history of these keyboards. It seems, they have been storaged in some container in a (job) lot.
That pcb inside the keyboard looks like to me has been exposed to water. Probably they were in outside container without any roof on top of them.

I'm guessing the problem maybe in the ribbon cables or their connectors. The wider connector looks like has two black dirty contact pins in it.
The narrow ribbon cable on the other hand has lost some black contact material (what is that black material anyway on the cables?).

I cleaned the pcb with some alcohol and q-tip, but I have not dared to touch the ribbon cable ends or the pins themselves yet.
I'm guessing that alcohol may leave residue that further insulates the contact, or even may destroy the ribbon cable black material itself.

I might just reassemble the unit and try it out if anything changed. But I can try it out earliest next weekend, because I'm not with the
mac itself - already transported it to the location, where I'm moving.
 
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The ribbon cable is unlikely to be the issue, as many more keys would not work if even a single contact is bad. You need to disassemble the keyboard itself and clean the film and rubber contacts. Maybe some rework of the conductive material is even needed.
 
I see.

The back panel seems to be a bit tricky to open. It looks like it is riveted.
If I need to drill the rivets to get it open then there is issue of how to get it tightly back together.

maybe, if just drill 1mm to get the rivets out and a small hole through the rivet in the center, I could
screw it back together with small screws. I need to think this a bit first what would be the wisest way of opening it.
 
The back panel seems to be a bit tricky to open. It looks like it is riveted.
Click to expand...
That's odd. The two Apple Design Keyboards I own had screws and were easy to disassemble. Guess you have a later revision then.
 
Its true, the apple design keyboard and the apple ADB keyboard may all look the same on the outside but internally there were a half dozen varieties; some significantly different from the rest making part swapping impossible. I have one with a bad membrane just sitting here waiting for the day I come across another with the same parts.
 
VintageVic said:
I see.

The back panel seems to be a bit tricky to open. It looks like it is riveted.
If I need to drill the rivets to get it open then there is issue of how to get it tightly back together.

maybe, if just drill 1mm to get the rivets out and a small hole through the rivet in the center, I could
screw it back together with small screws. I need to think this a bit first what would be the wisest way of opening it.
Click to expand...

Just get a rivet gun, they aren't that expensive.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1311&_nkw=rivet+gun&_sacat=0

If you don't want to use rivets, you can get basically any type of screw hardware that is known to exist on Ebay in bulk for cheap. You'll probably end up needing M2-M4 screws of some length.
 
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