Restoration of a Macintosh SE: Part 2 Hard Drive Troubles

Restoration of a Macintosh SE

// One hard drive was injured in the making of this.

     I know that I said I would release the SE restoration all in one week, but life got in the way. I am doing this as a hobby so I'm not gonna put tight schedules on releasing anything. I'm gonna write as things and if I miss anything along the way so be it.

Also I don't like how wrapping text looks on mobile so I'm gonna stick to blocking like I had it unless necessary.  So heres the story of how delidding a hard drive can lead to some interesting results.

    When we last left off, the Macintosh SE was turning on, however it was not booting from the internal drive. Knowing that the drive was most likely dead, I proceeded to perform a series of experiments that most would consider very unorthodox. I am going to say, I had no idea what I was doing. So take this whole section with a grain of salt. I did it because the drive was completely dead with no hope of being fully functional again. 

     

    With all that said let's get to it. I started by removing both the drives, which required the logic board to be removed. With everything out I cleaned the floppy drive for good measure, left the eject mechanism alone. Somehow it was still functioning and I didn't want to let out the magic fairies that are doing that. 

     During my troubles I kept receiving this error. The drive wasn't being recognized?  after closer inspection I realized the drive wasn't making any noises. No spinning or anything. After doing a bit of reading I found people who take the plunge into delidding their drives and freeing the head from the rubber bumpers. However that's only for a specific type of drive. The drive that I had was even older. It had a stepper motor and more closely resembled a 5-1/4" floppy drive in design.

    With nothing to lose I decided to try fixing the drive. I quickly realized if I turn on the SE with the drive plugged in the head did try to seek, but the platter refused to spin. I decided to give it a little tap and the disk began to spin! However my troubles were far from over. 

    The Disk was spinning however it wasn't able to written or read. Which is the whole purpose of the drive. With some more research I found that the Teflon coating on the disk gums up over the years causing the heads to basically glue themselves to the disk and be unable to float on the surface. Every time I power cycled the drive the disk would get stuck to the heads and need a little push to get spinning again. I knew this drive was dead. So I figured Why not experiment a little. 

I made this post on reddit, r/vintageapple. I love the first response I got about 5 minutes after posting it.

    

    The only problem I couldn't use the drive if it turned off. When the head parked after about 10 minutes they would stick to the platter once more.  So I did what any sane individual would do.

    I borrowed the SCSI drive from one of my PowerMacs and installed System 6 onto that. I also have a FloppyEmu on order. The drive experiment is finished for now, but I am gonna come back to it and see if there is a way to apply a new Teflon coating to the platters. The drive in my eyes was dead before I opened it. If I could figure out a way to repair them it an attempt for some people to try to recover their old data, then I did my part and if it isn't reliable enough. Well atleast the drive went out with a bang. I'll probably find a use for the stepper motor though, Maybe I could fix an old 5-1/4 drive that has a busted stepper? Only time will tell.

~Ian L.

Oh and Part 4 is coming out for the Tandy soon. Almost everything is sorted there.

Restoration of a Macintosh SE: Part 1 Memories and Memory

Restoration of a Macintosh SE

// Trust me, that is somewhere here.

    

    I just want to preface this, this gets a little Nostalgic at the beginning. If you don't care for the back story you can skip down to the Main Article.

    If I want to get real technical, my obsession for classic Macintoshes dates all the way back to when I was in 1st grade. While every other kid typed away on their iBook G3s and the rainbow of iMacs in our class, I was always the kid running to the Beige Tower we had in the corner. Maybe it was because of the clunking noises, the bigger monitor, the non-puck mouse, or maybe just because I liked looking at it. What ever the reason why, I knew I loved using it. It ran some version MacOS 8, and whenever I think of it I remember it being a Quadra, though that would have been really old for 2004, so it was probably a Performa or PowerMac tower. 

     Being maybe about Eight years old, without a source of income and no way to ever find a Mac in the neighborhood I grew up in, I did what any "normal" kid would do. I set out on a journey with my first computer that I had gotten and loved back in Christmas of 2006 from my father he built, that's a story all on its own. I had managed to Google about some of the software that I used at school and did research into my first steps of my future vintage computer hobby, emulation! I managed to set up Mini vMac and play some of those old games from school, but it wasn't enough. Soon I started messing with old DOS games my father left behind. We had a 166Mhz MMX Pentium in the basement that my father had also built long before I was born that I used to play DOOM and Wolfenstein on, I wish we still had That computer. I remember finding a box of Windows 3.11 5 1/4" floppies with the manual, and bringing the manual to school to read, I got laughed at when I showed it off. However, as I got older, all that wasn't enough. I went through PCs, Laptops, phones, even put CFW on a PSP to run some of the old games I loved. I couldn't tell you how many times I installed Windows 98SE onto different computers I acquired. All which were pretty useable on the web un until about 10 years ago, strange how things change. However, one day, all these years later, the Classic Macs I used oh so long ago, and the lust for my very own Classic Mac struck.

    I can blame it all on this, two years ago the opportunity struck where I could buy this Apple II+ and it was a long battle deserving of it's own, but it single handedly made me switch gears from a Linux Centric view of computing, rekindled my love for the old Apple computers I used so long ago, and drove me to Mac Collecting today. 

    But enough exposition, here is my latest project. The Macintosh SE. I had gotten this in a sad state from a family friend. It looked nice enough, but it wasn't turning on. A problem most Macintoshes of this vintage have. Which was a shame so I set off to bring it back to life. Opening it was a simple enough, it was only held together by 4 T-15 Torx screws and I had the tools due to a brief exploration into being an auto tech. 

 

Once the cover was off and the CRT exposed I promptly discharged it. A long screw driver and alligator clip helped me achieve this. Once inside I noticed a few things wrong with it. First off

 

    All of the cables were disconnected? Whoever was in here before I was I hope that they knew a little bit of what they were doing. Since everything was disconnected, I decided to remove the Logic board.

    Uh Oh?

 

    Things weren't looking good for this poor Mac SE at this point, however I did not give up hope. I noticed that the RAM was missing and the resistor had been cut that allowed larger SIMMs to be put in. Knowing that the older Macintoshes are very particular about the memory they use, I figured that it was probably not the ROM even though a 00000001 Sad Mac calls for an error in the ROM checksum. But where was I going to get RAM to check my theory?

    Then it hit me, I had received a Mac Plus someone was giving away on Reddit. The Mac Plus and SE used the same memory, and it just so happened that this one had a full 4MB. How convenient! Sorry poor Mac Plus, but I will find some new RAM for you, it's actually pretty cheap on eBay.

  

   

    I swapped the RAM very carefully with the strength of "Oh please don't break" on the plastic clips and with careful placement they were in and now for the moment of truth! 

   Wait, no the rear of the tube was also off, so it wouldn't have displayed an image, glad I noticed before turning it back on!

    It actually worked!! I was getting prepared to deal with sourcing a ROM, or modifying an EPROM into it with a ROM image from the internet, But I'm glad that it worked out!

 

    There definitely were still problems with it, like the 20MB SCSI drive was refusing to spin up, but I had the System 6 floppies I had traded an iMac G3 for. Next time we will be going over how I managed to get a failed SCSI drive to work by delidding the drive and doing some unorthodox fixes, and then giving up to replace the drive entirely.

    All this and more in Part 2. Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna go learn how to wrap text around images in HTML...

~Ian L.

The Chance 68K Macintoshes I Recently Got.

 

The Chance 68K Macs

// Somehow I got all these?

    About a week ago I was browsing r/VintageApple and noticed somebody was giving away an M0001 upgraded Macintosh Plus and a Bondi Blue iMac G3. I had been on the lookout for a 68k Mac for about a month and was very lucky to see it pop up. The bad news it was located about 60 miles west in Glenside, PA. For most this would be no problem, but they don't have a 1987 Dodge Dakota as their only vehicle. However my impulses got the best of me so I drove out the next afternoon and picked up both computers shown above. When I had arrived in PA the shift linkage to my transmission had popped loose. It was a good thing that I was in a mostly empty lot since I rolled down a hill a bit because the truck wouldn't go into park. To get home I popped it back into place and later replaced the hitch pin that fell out on the Turnpike. I had mostly wanted just the Mac Plus so I quickly posted about giving the iMac away and I ended up trading it for Mac System 6.0.8 install floppies.

Once in my possession, I immediately brought it home and tried to boot off of it, even though I was missing a keyboard and a mouse for these first trinity Macs. However I quickly realized that the disk I was given was a 1.44M high density. So that's one reason I traded the iMac. That and I didn't need it since I have a bunch of PowerMacs. Well anyway, how about a little bit of technical information to understand why the 1.44Meg disk  was problem.

    Released in 1986, the Macintosh Plus was a major upgrade from the two prior. Still lacking an expansion slot, though that would be remedied a year later with the SE, it was the last of the Trinity Macs before the switch to ADB and the abandonment Steve Job's vision of the appliance computer. Improving upon the Macintosh and Mac 512, the Plus was available with 1 megabyte of RAM. Upgradable with 30 pin SIMMs to 4MB and introducing the SCSI bus with an optional external hard drive, the Plus was truly the step in the right direction for Apple. My unit was an original M0001 Mac 128 that had the factory upgrade to the Plus. A procedure involving a new motherboard, back housing, and a drive swap of a 400k to an 800k floppy. So I needed an 800k disk to boot...

    

    Just before finding this Mac Plus, I had bit the bullet and ordered a Mac SE that was claimed to be in a state of disrepair pretty cheap on eBay. Two weeks later a Mac showed up on my doorstep, however it was not the SE  had ordered. It was instead this Performa 6200CD, which is just a cost reduced PowerMac 6200 with a 603 PowerPC. When I contacted the seller about the mistake, he refunded me and said I could keep the Performa as well. I graciously accepted since I never question a free computer. Speaking of which...

    

    By yet another twist of fate I received this beautiful Mac SE. People who know me are quite familiar with my weird hobby of collecting computers and tend to help out from time to time! So I was also given this unit by a friend. This Macintosh SE will be the topic of the next week of how it went from not turning on, to being a fully functional 68k Macintosh. I turned to two of my working Macs for parts in the process, but now I finally have the computer I always wanted. Oh and the Performa worked great. I'll have to do a write up on it, but that will come later down the pipe. 

~Ian L

Here's the 6200CD booting to 7.5.3, it was a blessing in disguise.

Restoration of a Tandy 1000 SL: Part 3 Memory Trouble

The Tandy 1000 SL

//I AM ERROR

    

    Where was I going with this? Oh Right! Memory errors....

    I Suggest reading through Part 1 and Part 2, where we went over the history and specifications of the computer, as well as a thorough cleaning. When we last left off the Tandy was powered on for the first time since the about 2001. To my horror I saw this screen. I knew that it would have issues, but old RAM and me don't get along and after tearing pads off an Apple //c while replacing a bad MT4264 chip I was was reluctant to want to replace memory on this computer. However, luckily for me, all the chips were socketed!

   

    Once Inside I proceeded to perform the Apple II style of troubleshooting like I did with my II+. Reseat EVERY chip. This required removing the drives and the Power Supply and finding a way to fit my tools under the drive caddy which is spot welded to the case frame.  But with enough finagling the chips were persuaded out of their sockets and contact cleaner was sprayed liberally before reseating the chips. 

I left the cover off so when I turned it back on I could continue troubleshooting...

Awwwwww still nothing.

    So back inside the machine I began by removing the 256K RAM upgrade which, after speaking to my father he spent about $300 US to install memory upgrade bringing it to 640K. Which is the memory ceiling of the computer. Who would ever need anymore than 640K, right? Well, no cigar, the next steps were painstakingly swapping all the chips one by one until something worked well first one I swapped changed the screen! Except...

    Still an error, but at least it showed more information. At this point I noticed it was after Midnight and that I was getting incredibly tired. I figured it would be best to sleep on it. Maybe a solution would come in a dream or something...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

    When I woke up in the morning I immediately jumped into the Tandy, with a fresh cup of coffee of course. Well sleeping on it worked great because I noticed the original 384K in the machine was MT4067's. Ahhhh Micron Technology the source of many cheap RAM chips that seemingly fail so often for absolutely no reason in vintage computers. Once I realized this, I promptly swapped the chips for the 256K I took out of the upgrade slots. Once all the MT chips were replaced with the compatible Sharp LH2464's that my dad paid so much for I turned it on crossing my fingers.

    To my amazement it actually worked! These machines came stock with MS-DOS 3.3 loaded into a ROM. To use any programs other than COMMAND.COM and FORMAT, you need a supplemental disk though. But it did allow for a very quick boot process! So seeing the DOS Prompt was so exhilarating. However I wasn't finished with it yet. I proceeded to cycle it testing each of the chips until I found the culprit.

Look at him sitting there. Mocking me... I have since ordered a full RAM compliment of 41464's to replace all the MTs before they inevitably fail. After asking on the VCFED forums a nice member informed me that Jameco still sells these chips news. How amazing is that! $26 bucks later and in about a week, I'll have the computer almost fully sorted. My father told me he had a 48MB hard card in the computer, but when I opened it, the card was nowhere to be seen. Oh well you win some and lose some. My plans for this computer is to give it new life as an early DOS gaming computer to play THEXDER, Zeliard, and many others, like this computer was designed to do! I have plans to install a Gotek floppy emu, and maybe an XTIDE. An 8087 FPU would be pretty sweet too, but for now Let's just admire this computer from a bygone time. Oh and I tried everything to get this computer to recognize memory between 384K and 640K, It's not possible on this. So I have to wait for the 256K to come in the mail.

    Oh before we end this, here is Colossal Cave Adventure playing in CGA mode. This screen took 15 seconds to draw, but looks stunning on this display. I definitely do not take my i5 computer for granted. It was a simpler time. When I get the upgrade kit in the mail I'll post another update on it. Today I had a 3 hour call with my father talking about the machine. He said he spent $1,100 in 1989 for the computer, $300 Dollars on the RAM upgrade, and close to $600 dollars on the hard card in 1990. That would be about $4,100 today adjusted for inflation! 

Until next time.

Wait....

    I did notice one problem with the monitor that I have to figure out how to fix. The screen curves inward. It's more noticeable in person so I have to figure out that out for next time it is especially annoying in Deskmate. It wouldn't be the first time I've messed with a CRT though. 

 

~Ian L.