Hello, and welcome back to The 8-Bit Guy. So, in this episode, I’m going to be doing
a restoration on this Apple RGB monitor. Now normally, I don’t get to excited about monitors.
To me they’re kind of like a RAM chip or a hard drive or something. They’re just
kind of a generic item. Unless, they are a matching monitor that goes with a specific
system. And in this case, this monitor is the matching monitor for the LC series of
Macintosh computers. Now, I’m going to be doing an episode in a couple of weeks that
heavily involves the LC series computers, so I wanted to have a matching monitor. So
Nate Spencer, who is a friend of mine, donated this to me and supposedly it works but it
needs a lot of cleaning and some retrobrite and whatnot. But, when I’m done with it
I’ll have my matching monitor so I can go ahead with that episode that I’m going to
do. Now, as an interesting coincidence, you’ve actually seen this LC-II before. In fact,
you saw it exactly two years ago. I did an episode called adventures in retrobrite and
in this episode I explored a variety of different ways to possibly retrobrite things, but one
of the things I did was, it was also the first episode where I featured my black crate and
I did the submersion method outside in the sun with the hot hydrogen peroxide. And, that
method has worked more or less flawlessly for me for the last two years and this was
the very first computer that I actually used that method on and here it is two years later
and it still looks great. So, I’m very happy about that. This computer needs a hard drive
so I’m going to have to do a little work on this computer too, but aesthetically speaking,
it still looks great, especially compared to what it looked like before, which as you
can see it was absolutely terrible two years ago before I did the restoration on it. In
fact, if you look at the back of it, you can still see that one little port cover that
I never actually retrobrited and you can see the stark contrast between what has and has
not been retrobrited. And like I said, two years have passed and there has been no re-yellowing
that I can see. So, I’m real happy with that. So, anyway, first thing we’re going
to do is plug this thing up. So, I just want to confirm before we start that the monitor
works. OK, so it looks like the monitor is working fine so let’s get started.
Although, before we go too far, I wanted to show you something. It seems my LC-II is technically
working, but take a listen to this horrible sound it is making. Yep, that squealing is
actually coming from the speaker itself. Here, I’ll unplug it so you can see. So, this
is something I’ll need to look into after finishing the monitor.
So, let’s take a closer look at this monitor. It’s pretty yucky looking. It doesn’t
look too bad at a distance, but up close you can see its pretty gross. And, if you sit
it on top of the LC-II, you can see it is definitely yellowed and does not match.
The first thing I’m going to do is remove this microphone holder. I have always found
these irritating and I have no plans to use one of those microphones. These things are
just held on by double-sided tape. I’m going to try peeling it off with my fingers, I don’t
want to risk damaging the plastic by using a screwdriver or something. Ahh, there we
go. And with any luck, I can gently pull this tape off and maybe leave no residue. You can
also see the original color of the monitor underneath.
Step one, as usual, is just some windex to clean off the dirt. It’s actually amazing
how much gunk this takes off quickly. And then this happened. Yeah, well, I guess I
should say this is not real windex. Its like generic Sams club window cleaner. I guess
the plastic isn’t made so well.
Time for some alcohol to see if it will remove the remaining gunk, such as this stuff here.
I think it’s left over adhesive from something. And not only does it remove it, but the original
color of the monitor is now revealed under the gunk, so that gunk has been on there a
long time.
Wow, this monitor already looks so much better just from a good cleaning. But I still plan
to retrobrite it. Because, I still don’t like that it doesn’t match the computer.
Oh and there’s another problem I noticed. If you look at the bottom here, you’ll see
it is missing all 4 rubber feet. So, I’ll have to find some feet.
And now to work on these side vents. I say vents, they are just cosmetic lines, really.
But there is crud built up in them. I’ll brush as much stuff out as I can. Later on,
I can hit this with the water sprayer outside and hopefully get anything left over. Here’s
another trick I do on stuff like this. I’ll just use a screwdriver combined with the paper
towel to get the stubborn dirt out. Anyway, yeah, that looks noticeably better.
Now time to deal with these rubber feet. There is left over adhesive in these rectangular
areas. So I’ll put some WD-40 in there and let it sit for a few minutes. I’ll also
get this little area next to the foot. I don’t mind using a screwdriver in these spots since
if I scratch the plastic nobody will ever see it once I put new feet in there. OK, so
far so good.
OK, now I’m going to start disassembling this thing. The only two screws I see are
these here on the bottom. So I’ll start by removing these. And this is really an annoying
angle to try to remove screws. Anyway, it looks like I can separate the bottom little,
but I can’t figure out how to go any further. So, I’ll take a look at the service guide.
In this photo it shows I’m supposed to push down this area, while pulling back. Well,
that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I’ll give it a try. Ok, I see how it
works now. OK. And there we go.
So, the very first thing I always do when working on a CRT is to discharge the tube.
Interestingly enough, I have so far never encountered a tube that had any noticeable
charge on it. I suspect because most of the tubes I’ve worked on are later model ones
that have bleeder resistors inside to discharge it after power off. And this one also has
no spark, but at least I have the peace of mind of knowing for sure that it is discharged.
And another ritual of mine is to double check the flyback is discharged by tapping the anode
cup to the chassis. Whether that accomplishes anything, I don’t know, but I do it anyway.
So, it appears they have this monitor divided up into two major boards. This bottom board
down here, this is like the power board, this is where all of the high voltage electronics
goes. And this is actually the board that is plugged directly into the back of the CRT
here, it handles all of the signaling from the actual computer and displaying it on the
screen. This has actually got some like goop here or something that’s connecting that
and I don’t want to have to cut through that, so I think I can actually leave this
board on here on the back and just try to unplug everything from this bottom board and
get it out, because the bottom board unfortunately, has to come out.
OK, so the first thing I do before disassembling something like this is to take many high resolution
photos of this thing from many different angles. That way if there is any question later where
some wire goes, I will have a good record.
Now it is time to start unplugging things. Unfortunately, I realized I was going to have
to remove that rear board too.
And there’s this goop I need to cut. Or at least I thought I did. In retrospect, I
feel pretty dumb about this now, and if you haven’t noticed why, you’ll see why shortly.
Unfortunately, the further I went along, I realized there were more and more things I
was going to have to disassemble. This job was becoming more complex by the minute.
So, eventually I realized that this rear board wasn’t glued on, but rather there is a release
mechanism. You just rotate this white knob and then it slides out easily. I guess I haven’t
seen a setup like this before, thats why I didn’t realize how that worked. Unfortunately,
there was still this one wire at each end that was connecting this smaller board. It
appeared I could remove it by prying this plastic piece open. However, I was extremely
irritated to find out it was soldered in place. So, I decided for the time being just to leave
it attached and sit the smaller board to the side. And now time to continue trying to get
the larger board out.
When I first took this piece out here I was really stumped as to what this thing was.
I was thinking is this the flux capacitor. Then I realized these cylinders are actually
the brightness and contrast knobs that stick out the side of the monitor.
OK, time to see if I have everything unplugged. Hopefully this whole bottom piece will come
out. And it does! It’s kind of dusty so I’ll hit it with some compressed air. All
of the caps look good, and since it was working fine before I took it apart, I don’t plan
to mess with any of this. And of course, here is the tube that I need to remove in order
to get the front bezel off to retrobrite. The tube itself is held in by 4 large screws.
The tube itself is a little hard to get ahold of and there is a large degaussing cable that
is making it stick to the bezel. Nevertheless, I got it out. Whew, that was a lot of work.
Perifractic’s lite-briting technique is starting to look a lot more attractive. And
before you ask, I do plan to try that at some point, but not on this item. I mean, it seems
like it works, but I want to test it out on something I don’t care about first and do
some more research on it.
As usual, it seems the day I want to do this, it is total overcast outside. However, the
forecast for the rest of the week is very promising for retrobrite.
First let me apologize for the overexposed picture, I had my exposure set manually and
couldn’t see the screen out in the bright sun. Let me grab the temperature here this
morning. Its already 118 degrees, and hopefully that will rise another 20 or 30 degrees throughout
the day. OK, there we go. And I’ll just recover it here. Now we wait.
OK, so it is late evening and its time to check on this. It only got about 6 hours of
sunlight due to me getting a late start on this, and probably only 3 or 4 hours of direct
sunlight. Nevertheless, it does look better. As I’m drying it off inside, I can see the
top part is still yellowed. I can also still see a contrast between the exterior and interior
parts of the plastic. But I’d like to see how much progress was actually made, so I
will compare to the rest of the monitor like this. And yeah, I can definitely see some
improvement, but it’s not done yet.
So, the next morning I decided to get an earlier start on this. Overnight the water temperature
fell to 88 degrees. Another problem this has is that I have more water in here than usual
because this is a taller object. So, it takes longer to heat it up. So I’m going to help
speed that up a bit by pouring in some boiling water. And that has increased our temperature
to 107 degrees. And now I’ll put the bezel back in for another day’s worth of retrobrite!
OK, so we’ve reached the end of the second day. Time to take it out. So far, it looks
pretty great. I’ll need to rinse off all of the peroxide. After drying it off, it looks
pretty darned good. But I’m seeing a weird spotted pattern on the top here. Now, one
thing I’ve learned over the years is that you have to give plastic a good hour after
removing from the solution to see what it is really going to look like, so hopefully
these spots will disappear. But even if they don’t, they are very faint. And here’s
what it looks like compared to the rest of the monitor.
And so this is some of the unexpected weirdness that can happen any time you retrobrite. First
of all, on the top I thought there was going to be this weird pattern that I showed earlier
when it was still kind of wet. Once it dried out, that pattern is gone but now there is
a very slight streaked pattern that looks like from where I was wiping it, which makes
no sense. This is what I’m more concerned about. I don’t know if you can see it on
the camera but there’s this little section about so wide and I know exactly what caused
that. At one point during the retrobrite, I found this thing had floated to the top
and this corner was slightly out of the water and so it did not get treated as much. So,
I’m going to go put it back in there again today and we’ll see what happens.
OK, so I went and put this out for another day and you can still sort of just barely
see that spot there. It might be possible to get it out by putting it out there again,
but I just don’t have any more time to wait on this and it is so minor. I’m just not
going to worry about it. So, time to start re-assembling.
OK, time to test it. Well, nothing blew up. Now I’ll power on the computer. And, good
news everyone. It seems to still be working. Now it is time to start on the rear piece.
This will be the largest item I’ve retrobrited in the crate. I’ll start by spraying these
vents really well to get any remaining dirt out of those.
So, one problem I deal with a lot is the formation of bubbles due to the reaction on the plastic.
And these bubbles, after a while, tend to make plastics float to the top. This can be
a problem. However, in this case I’m going to stick this brick in here, which should
eliminate that concern.
And since this thing is much taller, I’m going to have to add a lot more water. Now,
I’m concerned about two things. By adding a lot more water, I will be diluting the hydrogen
peroxide. Another problem is the water temperature. It will take longer for the sun to heat this
up. In fact, I had to put so much water in here just to get the tip top of this thing
submerged, there is no room at all for the greenhouse effect. So, I’ll just remove
the plastic wrap here completely. In fact, this still doesn’t want to completely submerge,
so I’m going to rotate it around the other way, since the crate is on a slight incline.
And I’ll add an additional bottle of peroxide.
I let this sit out for the rest of this day, which was just a few hours, and then the entire
rest of the next day. I did come out every few hours and try to eliminate these bubbles.
I also kept my eye on the temperature. It stayed pretty warm, but it never got quite
as hot as it did with less water. In fact, by the end of the second day the temperature
only reached 101 degrees. I thought about getting my Souz-vide cooker out, but I could
tell the color was improving despite the lower temperatures, so I just left it alone.
And so here we are a day and a half later. So, drying it off, I can already tell this
looks so much better. I’ll go ahead and re-assemble it and see if it matches the front
bezel. Yeah, I think this is going to look great! Now I’ll screw it back together.
I also took a trip to the hardware store and found some feet, which I am hopeful will fit.
So here goes. And look at that, a perfect fit!
And let’s have a look at it on top of the LC-2. It definitely matches well. Keep in
mind that the worst of the yellowing was on the top of the monitor, so even when I showed
the comparison earlier the contrast between the computer and monitor didn’t look terribly
bad, it really didn’t paint a good picture of how yellow it was. Still, when you look
at the picture I took before and after, you can definitely tell some difference.
I also managed to borrow a working hard drive solution for this. Speaking of the LC2, I
said I was going to re-cap it. I had hoped to show that in this video. But it turns out,
I ordered the wrong caps. These are the correct values, but they are not the correct size.
If these were traditional caps with wire leads on them, it might not have mattered, but since
they are surface mount, I really need them to be the right size. So I have had to re-order
the caps, but they won’t be here for several more days. So, I won’t be able to show you
the re-capping.
OK guys, so if you’re still with me, this is probably not the most exotic thing that
I’ve ever retrobrited before, but it is something that is kind of important to see
how to do, you know what’s necessary to tear down one of these monitors and put them
all back together. And amazingly, this one still works. But, you may be wondering what’s
this special episode that I’m going to be doing that I needed the LC system for? Well,
if you notice this thing is running the Oregon Trail right now. Now, that’s not the Macintosh
version of the Oregon Trail, that’s actually the Apple IIe version of the Oregon Trail.
The reason it’s able to do this is because there is a special card inside this LC-II,
which allows it to fully emulate an Apple IIe. And this is a really fascinating piece
of equipment and that’s what the next episode is going to be about, that I needed the LC-II
for. So, anyway, stick around for that episode and thanks for watching!