hello and welcome to another episode of
the 8-bit guy
today i want to revisit the macintosh
restoration project that i was recently
working on
now a very generous fan named david
freeman sent me several items which
helped move this process along for me uh
pretty well first of all you can see
that i've got my sc finally
up and running now it's not running on a
solid-state drive i do hope to
accomplish that at some point but
it is currently running on a more
traditional style scuzzy drive that
he sent me and then i'm going to be
getting my
macintosh plus up and running in this
episode hopefully
he also sent me an analog
board now he says this works and i have
no doubt that he's telling the truth
however one of the things i noticed is
that at least one maybe two of the
capacitors here
are bulging so that means they're right
at the end of their life so i've decided
that
if i'm gonna put this thing in this
computer i might as well go ahead and
replace the capacitors
on this thing before i do it i mean
because it's only a matter of time
before they're gonna burn out
so before i get started i wanted to
tackle a question that a lot of people
ask me they want to know
are these machines good machines for a
collector maybe to start off with as far
as getting into a vintage computer
after all these macintosh plus machines
were made famous in many movies of the
1980s especially things like back to the
future 2
and star trek 4 the voyage home
hello computer
but they're still iconic today as
evidenced by its appearance in many
shows such as futurama
get a load of that i will now consider
the evidence but the question is are
they still good starter machines for
the collector and i honestly have to say
the answer is no
these actually i i really don't
recommend these for first time
collectors there are several problems
with these machines getting them to work
and they can be a real real pain in the
butt so the first problem is of course
these i mean these machines have
built-in crt screens so naturally they
have a lot of high voltage analog
components on board so
you're going to run into a lot of them
where this is going to be the main point
of failure and a lot of people don't
want to mess with these
and for good reason they can be
dangerous and sometimes they're just
difficult to
to work on and figure out what's going
on the second problem is of course the
fact that they use
800k floppy disks now floppy disks in
and of themselves aren't necessarily a
problem
the newer macs can use high density
floppy disks which are compatible with a
modern floppy drive if you get like a
usb
drive to connect your pc these are not
these use double density disks now you
can tell the difference
between a high density and a double
density by how many holes they have
the double density will just have one
single hole
whereas the high density disk will have
two holes well these use the older style
these discs are harder to find
and then when you do find them it's
almost impossible to write them
it's very difficult to find a machine
that can write information
to these disks you pretty much need an
old machine like this in order to be
able to write them
so if you don't have any operating
system disks on hand you're going to
have to find some somebody else is going
to have to make some for you that
kind of makes it difficult anyway so the
other problem i want to tell you about
is the mice and the keyboards now
the macintosh se is a little better
because it can handle the
adb style keyboards and mice and these
are pretty common and they use these for
a long time and you can find lots of
these online
the macintosh plus and the 128k
and the 512k all use a very very
proprietary type keyboard in fact i
don't even have the right one
this one works this is actually from a
macintosh 512k
that's why the color is a little
different um
but this actually does not need to be
retro rider this is actually the
original color
of this uh of this keyboard but it does
work with this machine but
the problem is these keyboards and mice
will cost you more money
than the computer itself i haven't
figured out exactly why that is
i really don't know the answer but it is
not uncommon
that if you wanted a mouse and keyboard
for a mac plus you're looking at a
hundred dollars
often you can buy the computer for less
than that you would think there would be
as many mice and keyboards available as
there are computers but for some reason
that's just that's just the way it is
and then of course the last thing i
wanted to mention is these darn scuzzy
drives um
the macintosh se and
all of the compact macs they use the
scuzzy interface and these are
difficult to find and when you do find
them they generally don't work
and as a perfect example this is the one
that came out of this macintosh sc
and it was dead when i received the
machine and then
um a fan sent me this one and it was
working i had the machine working for
about 24 hours the next day
it was dead they just they die i mean
they're like dropping like flies and so
it's really difficult to find one of
these and find one that works
and so that's another problem and that's
one of the reasons why you'd probably
want to move to
uh one of the solid state devices but
those are like around a hundred dollars
so the point is by the time you get one
of these machines
and you get the analog board up to date
with modern capacitors
and you find the software and you find a
keyboard and mouse and you find a hard
drive for them
you're looking at four or five hundred
dollars to get one of these suckers
up and running it's it's kind of
ridiculous
but anyway um that aside
i'm going to go ahead and recap this
computer
and hopefully crossing my fingers here
hopefully we will have this thing up and
running by the end of the episode
i have not seen this thing run ever i've
had this in my possession for several
years
and i've never seen it work so let's get
started
so this is the capacitor that is
noticeably bulging it's easier to see in
person than it is on camera but if you
compare this one to its neighbor on the
left
you can see it's bulging so i'm going to
take that one out first
often there's this hot glue that they
put around some of these components like
i guess just to help hold them in place
or something
sometimes it comes off easily other
times not so easily
anyway it's helpful to remove as much of
it as you can because
it will make it easier to desolder these
capacitors
this piece in between the two was
particularly stubborn so i just left it
there
okay before we go any further we need to
remove this plastic piece here it's
actually really simple to remove just
use a screwdriver and
push the little pin inside of these down
and voila it comes right
out now that that is gone we can access
the solder joints
so i'm going to start on that first
capacitor i showed you now i don't have
any fancy desoldering equipment
and since the capacitor has two leads
but i can only heat one up at a time
what i do
is i desolder one leg and then i rock
the capacitor to the side
while the solder is melted that will
pull one of the legs out
and then i go back and do the second one
however for some bizarre reason
the lead just pulled right out of the
capacitor this time instead of coming
out of the board
it could be something to do with the
fact that it was already leaking you can
see the leaky residue on the board where
it used to be
the lead was being unusually stubborn
now eventually i used some solder wick
to remove all of the solder so i could
see what was going on it appeared that
it was just bent at a very sharp angle
making it hard to pull it through
anyway so i eventually got the extra
lead out using a pair of pliers as you
can see
now that it is out i'll remove some of
this hot glue that i couldn't get out
before
then i'll get started on this next
capacitor this one came out easily with
no problems at all it took less than 30
seconds
this one had also been leaking on the
bottom side though i'll use some solder
wick to soak up the excess solder down
here otherwise i won't be able to get
the new capacitors through the holes
okay so this is some shameless self
promotion but i'm going to use one of
the pre-made capacitor kits that i'm
going to be selling on my website
because i want to make sure these
actually do work correctly before
anybody buys them
okay so you may notice that the new
capacitor is a 1000 microfarad it's just
like the old one but it is 25 volts
instead of 16
that's fine you can always substitute a
higher voltage but
you may notice it's smaller this
concerns me as well because i'm afraid
some
other specification of the capacitor may
be wrong but i've asked around and i've
been told
that capacitors have just gotten smaller
over the last 30 years
okay another important thing to mention
is that electrolytic capacitors are
polarized so that means they have to go
in one specific direction
you'll notice that they always mark the
negative side with a little stripe
usually the boards are marked like this
too but this board they've marked the
positive side
with a little plus symbol so we'll make
sure the minus sign goes on the opposite
side and
insert this down into the holes
now the leg spacing is slightly off on
the smaller capacitors so they aren't
going to sit flush on the board like the
old ones unfortunately
now what i usually do before trying to
solder these is to bend the leads out
slightly
that will keep it from falling back
through the hole while i'm working on it
and then the easy part putting some new
solder down this went on real nice
the last part of the job is snipping
these leads here
okay and the first two are done now we
just have a bunch more to do but i won't
make you watch every single one
so to fast forward i've already removed
these two larger ones and
these new ones actually fit perfectly
flush which is reassuring
so i'm almost done now and here are all
of the capacitors i've removed
i have one left to do this one i'm
particularly concerned about it because
it's a non-polarized capacitor
if you notice it has no stripe anywhere
well i was not able to find a
replacement for this
so it was suggested to me to use a large
polypropylene capacitor instead
i'm a little skeptical but electrically
speaking it does fit all of the
specifications
one problem is the huge difference in
the lead spacing so
i'm just going to go bend them in like
this and then i'm going to put some
extra heat shrink over the parts of the
leads that will be exposed
just as a precaution and then i'm just
going to stick this
right down in there and after all the
soldering is done this is how it looks
i guess that'll work so
i have one other problem to solve if you
take a look in here you'll notice
a lot of corrosion on the battery
compartment terminals
but it gets worse if you look here
you'll see the contact is
actually broken i might could fix this
by
bridging it with some solder but i want
to get rid of the corrosion too
however i think i can salvage the old
battery compartment from the old analog
board that i'm going to be replacing
the annoying thing is when you look at
how this is attached to the board you'll
see they actually melted the plastic on
the back to hold it in place
so there's no real way to to take these
off but
i think what i'll do is start by
unsoldering these things here and
then we'll just go from there okay so i
don't have any fancy desoldering
equipment so i'm just going to use
solder wick
or desoldering braid as some people call
it that's all i've got but it works
just takes patience so you can see i
have this one desoldered and i can
actually move it so you know it's
totally free from the board
i decided the best way to remove the
plastic was with a dremel
i'm being careful not to damage the
board but fortunately there aren't any
traces near these parts anyway
okay so now it's time to see if it will
come loose and it does
it really wasn't all that hard actually
and here it is
and yeah i'm glad i decided to take this
out i really want this corrosion cleaned
off
there's a little corrosion here on the
board too but it will be easy to clean
okay so now it's time to disassemble the
macintosh plus i decided to have a
little look in the battery compartment
since there is a screw here that needs
to be removed
i was surprised to see it has a little
corrosion in the terminals here too
although not nearly as bad
so i got out my super long torx driver
and went to town unscrewing
um i actually had this unit apart a few
weeks ago when i snatched the floppy
drive out of it to repair my macintosh
se
the machine hasn't been plugged into
power for at least two years though so
i'm pretty sure it's discharged but i
don't want to take any chances so
i'm gonna go through the discharging
procedure anyway i noticed the ground
lug here was loose
which is odd actually makes me wonder if
that might have been part of the problem
anyway i'll tighten that up to make sure
we get a good discharge
okay so no spark and no huge surprise
there
time to start unplugging the crt and now
i can remove the analog board
while i'm here i'll go ahead and install
this new floppy drive that david freeman
also sent me
i'll have to remove the logic board in
order to get this bracket off though
okay this was pretty simple floppy drive
is installed
now back to the battery compartment
issue i noticed this one looks very
different on the back
but it is still melted on and i'll have
to dremel it again skipping ahead a bit
i've already desoldered and dremeled
this one loose so let's take it off
so you can see this one is corroded but
i can salvage this
i'll put in a bowl with some vinegar and
let it soak for a few hours
okay so i let it soak for about three
hours and now i'm gonna take it out and
rinse it off
if you have a look at the terminals you
can see a discoloration but that's where
the coating was eaten away by the
corrosion but the corrosion itself is
now gone
in order to fasten this thing onto the
new board i used some 15-minute epoxy
well i didn't plan for that much to come
out but it's fine
i don't need much at all okay so i'm
going to mix it up really well and i'm
just gonna put a small amount inside
these holes
i imagine a little will go a long way in
this case
now i'll just shove this thing back down
in the holes and let it sit for 15
minutes
then i'll re-solder the two leads here
and i think that'll be it
all right so this board is finished
i have gone back and visually
reinspected
all of the capacitors to make sure that
i didn't put any of them in backwards on
accident
it has been known and i've put the back
back on it the battery compartment um is
restarted in
and the epoxy has cured so this thing is
ready to test
now i'll be honest i don't know if this
thing's gonna work and
you know i think i've already
established on my channel that
you know even when things don't go to
plan i'm still going to produce the
video anyway
so i guess we'll find out here shortly
it'll
probably take me about 10 minutes to put
this back in the machine it is with the
great anticipation that i reassemble
this computer
[Music]
all right so uh this is it got my fire
extinguisher ready
i'd uh like to point out i've never seen
this computer work and
i really don't know what's gonna happen
here so uh here we go
i'm gonna turn it on
well it sort of works
it's very dim and it's clicking
somewhere but there is a picture on the
screen
so i was reading through the dead max
scrolls and i found a mention of the
clicking
it says if you put a disk in the floppy
drive and it goes away
then to ignore it because it's the disk
drive making the sound so i'll try that
so i'm going to put a boot disk in here
try it again
it did boot up to the desktop and the
clicking is indeed gone
so thank goodness it wasn't something
high voltage related i started playing
around with the trim pots for brightness
control and discovered i could get a
decent amount of brightness out of the
screen
but when i made it brighter it tended to
be a little blurry and the focus control
seemed to have no effect
at this brightness level
but overall the machine is usable like
this alright well i've been working on
this project
for about a week and i've got kind of a
mess here and i think it's time to clean
it up and move on to something else now
i just kind of want to let you know
where this is going to go i'm pretty
sure all the capacitors are working
now analog high voltage electronics are
not my thing
but i've talked to a variety of people
who
do understand this kind of thing better
during the week of this process that
i've been doing and
the consensus seems to be that the
capacitors are
not the problem which i'm relieved about
because that's the work that i did
you know so one possibility that has
been mentioned several times is the
possibility that the tube itself
could just be worn out it's it's old and
that does happen
and there's a lot of burning on the
screen so that does kind of correlate
with that
so the way i'm going to test that is my
friend raymond has a spare
crt that will fit one of these machines
and i'm going to be picking that up
probably next week sometime and i'm just
going to go ahead and replace the tube
and see if it looks any better if it
does then we'll know for sure that the
analog board is fine
if not there are a few other components
on the analog board that
could be the problem particularly
there's a resistor
possibly even a ceramic disc capacitor
that i haven't replaced yet that could
be the problem so
i will investigate that later in the
meantime i hope
this gives you a perfect example of why
i don't like working or recommending on
these machines because
these are the types of problems you're
most likely going to be dealing with
all right well i hope you enjoyed this
episode a little long but
hopefully educational anyway stick
around because as always i've got more
stuff coming
[Music]
you