u/radrestoration

Mail today, two 64Cs, both working, but one missing a couple of keys and quite yellow. I think I have a fully set of non-yellowed keys, but I'll need to remove all the dust bunnies and give a full clean.

Later model TiBook, some of the finish isn't the best, but seems to be all working, although struggling with OS X (and hard drive doesn't sound so hot), so I think I'll be putting 9.2.2 on and keeping this as my only PowerBook. I do have the earlier model TiBook, and it's pretty nice, but has some screen issues, so I'll be passing that on.

Maybe not the most exciting repair you'll see this week, but I got a 128D last week in a generous trade (and if you're keeping track, it was the 3rd 128 keyboard I cleaned in a week). The machine itself is in great condition, but the power button fell apart when I looked at it funny.

Finding a precise fit seems difficult, but I did find these on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082PNCL61?th=1

And yes, you have to get 8 (or pay $1 less and get 5). The fit is a bit too tiny, so I had to secure with UV resin, but it seemed to work out pretty well. Back in action (once I re-carbon the keypads).

In the only-recently-vintage pile, just picked up this real nice Windows XP era Compaq NC6000 with the desirable ATI Mobility Radeon 9600. The machine is from 2004/2005 and is something I had been after for a while - although I don't have a pressing need for it, it does fill a gap in my collection.

Note the dual HP/Compaq branding, and just before the era where laptops started going widescreen from the 4:3 layout here and of course the weirdo 2000s styling.

The BIOS is really locked down, with only a few options compared BIOSes of the era. The various magic combos to unlock seemed ineffective, so whilst in principle it can boot from USB, I had to go old school and burn an XP SP3 CD on my era-appropriate G4 graphite tower, and was able to install XP on the DVD drive, although it was pretty noisy.

Still using the OG spinning hard drive, but I have here an SSD and some RAM I had originally been planning to put in a G4 PowerBook, but should work just fine here.

Still need to install last of the drivers, including the WiFi so I can connect insecurely to the internet.

I also picked up at the same time a much earlier Toshiba T1000SE, floppy only DOS laptop. This comes from a time before the the typical laptop form factory had be entirely settled. It's not working, and I don't have much interest in these DOS-based floppy only laptops, so I'll be passing it on. The 2MB (!) RAM upgrade card it has is apparently desirable.

I am looking for a Windows 95 era machine to round this out - I do have what would be a real nice Toshiba 430CDT, but it has a problem with its keyboard controller. I'm leaning towards a Thinkpad at this point, but we'll see what comes my way.

Picked up today - Commodore Rules machine works, but has some trouble turning on, no doubt a recap is in order. The more distressed machine isn't powering on - it's already spoken for, but I'll be giving it a good clean - surprisingly OK inside; the dirt is on the outside.

The C64 was in nice condition and only needs a PLA. 1541 works and 1530 haven't looked at yet, also a 128 and 64 PSU both working. Also in this lot, a washing basket to carry it all.

Not shown here, and in the mail today, an extremely tanned (I mean, some serious tanning bed time) boxed C64 that worked immediately.

Atari 400 today, bit grubby, but cleaning up nice. Space bar is stuck so I'll need to take a look at the membrane. I have boxes for most of these items, but here's a few, and playing Donkey Kong (actually on my 65XE).

And finally a bonus item in the "which of these is not like the others" a Coleco Quiz Wiz with OG Everyready 9V battery - slightly swollen, but still intact.

I got these a little while ago, but finally got around to finishing up. The Apple IIe was in terrible shape, but immediately went to a new home. The monitors are rough, and might just have to be discarded.

The PowerMacs were both very dirty and typically a ton of brittle plastic. I pulled it all apart for cleaning, and the 7300/180 is running just fine with OS 9.1. I did have to replace the momentary power switch (and of course the plastic switch is gone, so you have to reach inside), and overall the machine came out well enough apart from its plastic.

The 7200/90 was beyond dusty inside, and was a different story. The PSU went pop when I plugged in it - I did open it to see if I could see what (more dust), but couldn't immediately spot the problem. So, no idea if that machine works at all (the PSUs between the two machines are different), so its fate most likely is as parts.

"I don't have a problem, you have a problem" - Sean Malseed on having too many Macs.

TL;DR - 3 SEs, 1 SE/30, all with problems.

Left to right, SE/30 with SE motherboard, Battery bomb SE/30, VCF East SE, Flood SE.

The photos are in reverse chronological order and are a bit mixed up, but let me start with the one you've been waiting for - the flood Mac. This SE was in hurricane Helene back in 2024 and retrieved out of a gentleman's backyard. It was in a carrying case, which didn't help it much. It appears to have been on its left side and was filled with mud, or silt.

What you need to understand about this mud is that it's more like an incredibly fine clay or silt, it reminds me of descriptions of the regolith on Mars or the Moon - it sticks to everything, and it's not enough to wash it off. It particularly sticks to plastic and has to be removed with a brush or paper towel and it gets into the smallest of crevices. The machine will never be fully free of it.

Components of note:

• Floppy very rusty, not worth saving
• Hard drive - showed promise, and the mechanics work, but probably not going to be able to save.
• CRT - seems OK, haven't powered up yet. Analog board - very dirty, but looks OK now. Haven't tried yet.
• PSU - incredibly, was working despite being stuffed with mud. (Powered up in the garage). Currently being recapped.
• Chassis - very rusty, I opted to use rustoleum on it. This obviously compromises its purpose as a ground, but the screw holes ought to be good.
• Mouse - was working, but seem to have lost one direction. There was no keyboard.
• Outer shell - some damage in shipping. I have reglued the corners but it's never going to be the same oh well. Did I mention there was mud all through the computer?

Finally, the motherboard. I ended up using my other SE with the SE/30 and ATX extensions to compare side-by-side and do some debug. In the end it turned out to be mud the ROM and GLUE sockets and failed caps - the machine did finally get to a checkerboard for a few seconds. Now, there's a lot of talk about caps from these machines/era being super robust, but well, not in this case. In fact some of them fell apart when I removed them - I'm recapping this board today.

So, that's the current state. Hopefully the board is back working, and then I'll look at the analog board and PSU.

So, next machine would be my SE which I picked from from the free pile at VCF East with "bad analog board". I grabbed it, having spotted its BlueSCSI but really knowing nothing about these. It did work for a bit, but then died just as I was trying to debug the flood Mac. I ended up recapping the PSU, but it's still having problems, so I guess it's the analog board after all (I have an idea what's wrong, just haven't gotten to it yet).

Meanwhile, because more is more, I bought an SE/30. I knew full well what the problems might be with it, and incredibly I'd not had any machines with battery damage to date (and I've bought a lot of Macs), but luck ran out here. The machine was really dusty inside, which has now been cleaned, and I took out the chassis and painted (and used a wire wheel) on just the rusty section. I ended up using *this* machine for the side-by-side.

The battery damage cleaned up pretty well - I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to fix this myself, but I have a guy who can, so we'll see. The machine has heavy burn in on the CRT too, much more than the other machines.

And the last addition today, is another battery bombed SE/30, but with an SE motherboard swap from back in the day. Well, it does power on to checkboard but seems to be having some problems, so now I'll have to fix that too. But it does have a nice CRT (and was cheap with keyboard and mouse), so I think it might end up being really nice proper SE/30 and the floppy going in the flood SE (It's actually FDHD).

I think that's it!

Not sure what to say about this one, really.

Pictures a bit disordered, sorry about that, but 1 machine yesterday and 2 today.

1st machine - VIC in backwards, no fuse, bad kernal ROM. The machine then briefly worked, but looked like RAM or multiplexer on the way out. I ended up using some of the chips in a refurbed board - I'll come back and fix it another time.

2nd machine - Typical "rainbow PLA" problem, so easy fix.

3rd machine - also no fuse! Bad PLA and SID was burning up; it was showing an unusual white triangle on the screen before vanishing to black. Remove SID and replace PLA and now working.

Some unfortunate packing - machine 3 was at the bottom of a pile with no padding and the standoffs are bust. Words have been had.

Also a huge pile of both VIC-20 and C64 cartridges as well as the music maker you can see.

Actually, it was $9 + $105 shipping, which was a bit much, but just a reminder that people like to forget important details when it comes to how much of a bargain they got!

Anyway, it's powering on, but obvious battery damage, which I've done a little cleaning on. It'll have to go on the shelf for now though, since I have a backlog of stuff. I'll have some updates soon on my compact Macs (including the flood SE from quite a while ago now and the battery damaged SE/30). The iMac is the blueberry version, btw.