anyone here into retro computing

[Pee Cola]

Didn't another youtuber lose his stuff in a flood? I don't really follow them.

You're thinking of Jan Beta. He recently helped someone out by repairing a couple of their machines that were damaged in the big floods that Germany had a couple of months back.

 

[totallyrandomusername]

Total sucker for the OG Macs here.
1-bit graphics are charming as hell, imo.
View attachment 2605257
If you keep checking eBay, you'll eventually come across a pretty good deal on this stuff. Broken machines with easily fixable issues can be had dirt cheap sometimes.

Very true. Any compact Mac that shows a screen that is a checkerboard, other crap like that, probably just needs to have the board washed and recapped.

Anyone that has a compact Mac that hasn't had the caps replaced, if every time you access the HD the screen wobbles a bit, it needs a recap ASAP. The reason this is happening is that the current pull of the HD every time it is accessed is causing the power across the system to flux, which is effecting the stability of the monitor. It's only a matter of time when this happens before the system fails to start or you get magic smoke, which one always wants to avoid.

 

[RolandD-10]

Very true. Any compact Mac that shows a screen that is a checkerboard, other crap like that, probably just needs to have the board washed and recapped.

Anyone that has a compact Mac that hasn't had the caps replaced, if every time you access the HD the screen wobbles a bit, it needs a recap ASAP. The reason this is happening is that the current pull of the HD every time it is accessed is causing the power across the system to flux, which is effecting the stability of the monitor. It's only a matter of time when this happens before the system fails to start or you get magic smoke, which one always wants to avoid.

Don't forget this lil bastard:

SE, SE/30's and Mac Classics with badly garbled screens likely had their Maxell bombs go off and will be incredibly difficult if at all possible to fix.

 

[AmpleApricots]

You're thinking of Jan Beta. He recently helped someone out by repairing a couple of their machines that were damaged in the big floods that Germany had a couple of months back.

Well better than fire damage at any rate. Suprised that that didn't kill the modulator, really curious if you'd still get a picture there via RF.

This is also an old revision PCB, I wouldn't necessarily agree they were more reliable than earlier revisions, although that late they usually didn't come with certain MOS branded 74xx logic and PLAs that were very prone to failing. I'm personally a fan of the latest boards with the newer revision SID and VIC and the far more highly integrated PLA. Never saw a defective one. You can also see the diode bodge commodore did on these ones at the corner of the board. This was part time work for bored housewives in Braunschweig and was done in their living room.

A good upgrade you can do for these boards is getting rid of the 7805 linear regulator (and it's heatsink) and replace it with a RECOM, TACO or OKI branded switching regulator. The 7812 doesn't really run close to capacity so replacing it is kinda pointless. Not only will the computer consume less power but it will also run noticeably cooler. What I personally wouldn't bother with and I've seen often is heatsinks on the ICs. These old NMOS parts don't give a toss and will gladly sit at 95C for 30 years without breaking a sweat.

 

[Pee Cola]

A good upgrade you can do for these boards is getting rid of the 7805 linear regulator (and it's heatsink) and replace it with a RECOM, TACO or OKI branded switching regulator.

True. Swapping out the 7805 with a modern switching replacement (I tend to use Traco) is something I do with every vintage computer I touch, especially if it means getting rid of a massive heatsink that takes up a fair bit of case room and just spreads the heat across a bunch of other components. I'm looking at you, ZX Spectrum.

 

[AmpleApricots]

True. Swapping out the 7805 with a modern switching replacement (I tend to use Traco) is something I do with every vintage computer I touch, especially if it means getting rid of a massive heatsink that takes up a fair bit of case room and just spreads the heat across a bunch of other components. I'm looking at you, ZX Spectrum.

I was reminded by another post I made how far we have come regarding anything power, voltage regulation and efficency. You can often easily halve power consumption of a lot of this old crap by basically just switching out a few parts for a few bucks. Modern power supplies are amazing too. I had a no-name 286 hanging off a PicoPSU with non-derated tantalum caps (as was the fashion of the time) and one of the 16V tantalums on the +12V rail shortened out. Nothing much happened because the logic in the modern power supply upstream did it's job that fast. Short circuit detection indeed. No damage besides the cap. (replaced all of them on that rail with 25V parts) Just fifteen to twenty years ago I would've had a small scare and a very smelly room.

Also the small Z180 I built around modern parts and ample SRAM. That thing sips about as much power as my mouse.

 

[WinnieTheJew]

tell some stories about particularly troublesome ones.

70s mini computers in particular suck. They use a ton of little proprietary chips, third party expansion boards and weird peripherals that make testing a pain and all the documentation was lost 20 years ago. A lot of them let you connect with a serial terminal for administration but some don't have a firmware command prompt you can access on the serial port with a regular terminal emulator. To get input you have to pay like a hundred bucks for a special program that can emulate the physical terminal you don't have.

 

[Cyclonus]

Doesn't get much more retro than this.

 

[Mullti Port RDRAM]

If there's one retro computer I do want, its a Sharp X68000. Look at this based motherfucker. Imagine playing Castlevania on it.

This and the NeXT Cube had to be the coolest looking computers in existence. No need to apologize or be thin with these bad boys.

 

[Literal Shitbag]

If there's one retro computer I do want, its a Sharp X68000. Look at this based motherfucker. Imagine playing Castlevania on it.

View attachment 2642700

This and the NeXT Cube had to be the coolest looking computers in existence. No need to apologize or be thin with these bad boys.

The MiSTer community is working on a X68000 core. It looks to be coming along quite nicely! Though I gotta admit, the X68000 does look pretty badass.

 

[totallyrandomusername]

Don't forget this lil bastard:
View attachment 2639734
SE, SE/30's and Mac Classics with badly garbled screens likely had their Maxell bombs go off and will be incredibly difficult if at all possible to fix.

Any that were Maxell bombed, I wouldn't expect them to even give a checkerboard, they are usually just straight up dead. Maxell bombs are the bane of classic mac's. Ever more so for the Mac's that absolutely need a PRAM battery to boot. I don't have them in any of my systems. I just let them think it's 1980.

My classic II, I'm not sure what someone did to it. Somehow the SCSI port was wrecked from some kind of corrosion that appeared to be introduced externally. Since it used to be a school system, I suspect that a teacher knocked over a cup of coffee.

 

[Pee Cola]

The MiSTer community is working on a X68000 core. It looks to be coming along quite nicely! Though I gotta admit, the X68000 does look pretty badass.

I've not put together a MiSTer setup yet, mainly due to expense and the lack of decent off-the-shelf cases. I'm quite keen on eventually getting an RMC MiSTer Multisystem, as it seems to have addressed a whole bunch of my concerns. That said, I'm holding off in case a cost reduced version is eventually released (the Multisystem has a bunch of ports and whatnot that I'd never use and prefer not to pay for).

Any that were Maxell bombed, I wouldn't expect them to even give a checkerboard, they are usually just straight up dead. Maxell bombs are the bane of classic mac's. Ever more so for the Mac's that absolutely need a PRAM battery to boot. I don't have them in any of my systems. I just let them think it's 1980.

Looks like there are reproduction PCBs for machines like the Classic and SE. There's a series of videos showing a Classic being rebuilt with one of these PCBs in real time, but it runs for over 11 hours (it was originally a livestream and a few bugs were found in the PCB along the way because first prototype). This is the tl;dr version (Bruce helpfully summarises the first 3 parts so you don't have to watch them):

 

[totallyrandomusername]

I've not put together a MiSTer setup yet, mainly due to expense and the lack of decent off-the-shelf cases. I'm quite keen on eventually getting an RMC MiSTer Multisystem, as it seems to have addressed a whole bunch of my concerns. That said, I'm holding off in case a cost reduced version is eventually released (the Multisystem has a bunch of ports and whatnot that I'd never use and prefer not to pay for).

Looks like there are reproduction PCBs for machines like the Classic and SE. There's a series of videos showing a Classic being rebuilt with one of these PCBs in real time, but it runs for over 11 hours (it was originally a livestream and a few bugs were found in the PCB along the way because first prototype). This is the tl;dr version (Bruce helpfully summarises the first 3 parts so you don't have to watch them):

Hard to believe that people are making new PCB's for Mac Classics. It shows how much these little Mac's are loved.

 

[AmpleApricots]

It mostly shows how easy it is to have professionally made PCBs manufactured these days. I know this sounds like I shit on the effort but I really don't. That shit used to cost hundreds and thousands, even usually was in the "don't even try" or "manufacturers will laugh at you if you have to ask for the price" realm and I'm not exaggarating. Now everyone with a copy of Eagle can have 100% professional PCBs made in China for pocket change or hobby money. It gave the electronics hobbyist a huge boost and made all these small projects possible. The small ARM computers and collapsing price on programmable logic and the utilities for them helped too. Everyone can design their own 8 or even 16 bit computer and probably not spend much more than in the ballpark of the low hundreds. What a time to be alive.

 

[Pee Cola]

My Mac Plus and Mac Classics (2) could use new PCBs, none of these machines work - I literally took them from a dumpster outside a business in 2003 in California. But I don't actually know what's wrong with them.

I'm not a hardcore vintage Mac guy, but the Plus probably has a sus analog board. These develop bad solder joints over time due to heat (no internal fan on the Mac Plus... gg Steve).

The Classics probably have exploded batteries. If so, at the very least it'll need to be cleaned and some traces may need repairing. Though it might be just as easy to replace the PCB. It all depends on confidence and skill level (or if you just send the board to someone else to repair).

The Classics have really browned cases which appear to be close proximity to a fire.

Not necessarily. Light coloured computer cases from the '80s and '90s are notorious for turning yellow. In extreme cases, they can look brown. Those Classics sound like they'd be good for retrobriting practice.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Oh I know about yellow cases I've used retrobrite on Snes's commodore 64s apple iis, among others, to remove it. The brownness on the Mac classics is way darker dark brown darker. I've seen ABS plastic go golden yellow but never Brown from the flame retardant in the plastic. What I think happened this office that I took these from I think may have had a fire inside and shut down because of it. And in doing so they threw out all of their stored old computers, of which I took almost every one of. Some really junky ibms that sadly were not savable, but the Macs were the most interesting things there.

They are on my to do list. Probably next up is getting my Apple Lisa repaired.... I at least know what's wrong with it.

Try cleaning the case. It might be cigarette gunk. In the 80s everyone smoked anywhere. I've found that it's actually very good at preserving things if you can get it off. I think any heat that would've caused the cases to darken would've also melted them, IMHO.

 

[totallyrandomusername]

I've had to trash more than a few systems because the person who had them smoked while using them for more than a decade. The amount of tar was so thick, you couldn't see the components of the motherboard. I figured just being around it was hazardous.

 

[AmpleApricots]

I've considered that, but really I should have done it 15 years ago because I have now had these machines for 18 years and have never done much with them. I think the thing that has prevented me from doing what I need to do to repair them is that a monitor is involved, and that can be dicey. I had no problem in the past doing a complete tear down and restoration of an apple iie Platinum, or an apple iiGS, but I have this superstition about taking apart monitors due to some people I know getting shocked by them.

Yes I could probably attempt to clean them without actually taking them apart but to do it properly you really have to get it down to the bare plastic. With the prior Apple restorations I took the boards out and everything.

I'd first try scrubbing with some good old fashioned soap water in an inconspicuous place. If it's brightening right up and the water comes off brown, it's cigarette gunk. In my experience, anything more aggressive than some warm water and soap damages the plastic anyways. That's just how most plastics of that kind are. A few of the youtube people that do all this "restoration" stuff IMO just get bored and try all kinds of things to get more content out of the same old stuff. Generally, beyond cleaning I really would just leave yellowed plastic yellowed. In my experience the chance to get it anywhere normal looking with no side effects is low anyways and there's a 50/50 chance you'll regret whatever you tried to do.

You're not wrong about the monitors although in my time I was mostly worried about dropping them because of the delicate neck and really wrong-feeling and counter-intuitive weight distribution. What many people forget is that the CRT is basically a big capacitor itself. If you want to do everything by the book, the right way to work on it is to ground the tube itself first. I understand your fears and don't feel bad about them. I do own two CRT screens I don't use because that thought in the back of my head that they'd need to be maintained then and I sincerely hope I'll never have to repair another CRT-anything in my life and I hugely detest them which is kind of a sin in this hobby if you ask some. And you know, generally spoken every CRT will break down. They have a lot of parts that are bound to break down with usage and time. Some of them were in all likelihood custom made for the screen in question and are irreplaceable. They're in my opinion just not worth the bother. Sucks when they are such an integral part of some computers though.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

See I had pretty good success with retrobrite. I would probably put the number at about 95% satisfaction. The only one that didn't come out flawless was the Apple iie Platinum, which was a former elementary school computer that was probably sitting under fluorescent lights in a computer lab for years. It didn't look bad, it's just that I wasn't able to get off all of it. But I did get 100% of it off the disc drives for that machine, and every other computer I did. Probably if I had done it another day, I could have gotten it perfect but this was when retrobright was brand new and you had to make your own formula, maybe mine wasn't perfect.

 

[Pee Cola]

I'd first try scrubbing with some good old fashioned soap water in an inconspicuous place. If it's brightening right up and the water comes off brown, it's cigarette gunk. In my experience, anything more aggressive than some warm water and soap damages the plastic anyways.

Adrian Black recently cleaned up a portable CRT TV that was caked in nicotine. He got some good results with Windex and a piece of magic eraser.