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 pretty well. First of all, you can see that I’ve got
my SE finally up and running. Now, it’s not running on a solid state drive,
although I do hope to accomplish that at some point. But It’s currently running on a more traditional-style
SCSI drive that he sent me. And then, I’m going to be getting my Macintosh
Plus 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 are right at the end of
their life. So I’ve decided if I’m going to 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 going to burn out. So before I get started, I wanted to tackle
the 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 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 onboard. 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 work on and figure out what is going on. The second problem is 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 to 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 where as the high density disk will have two holes. These use the older style. These disks are harder to find, and 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 wanted 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
used 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 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. This actually does not need to be retrobrited,
this is actually the original color of this keyboard. It does work with this machine, 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 $100. 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 the way
it is. And then, of course, the last thing I wanted
to mention is these darned SCSI drives. The Macintosh SE and well, all of the compact
Macs, they use the SCSI 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 SE, and it was dead when I received the machine. And then, a fan sent me this one. And it was working. I had the machine working for about 24 hours. And the next day, it was dead. They just, they die. They’re like dropping like flies. So it’s really difficult to find one of
these, and find one that works. And so that’s another problem. And so that is the reason you’d probably
want to move to one of the solid state devices, so those are around $100. 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 4 or 5 hundred dollars to get one of these
suckers up and running. It’s kind of ridiculous. But anyway, that aside, I’m going to go
ahead and recap this computer, and hopefully, crossing my fingers here, hopefully we’ll
have this thing up and running by the end of the episode. Now, 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 it’s neighbor on the left, you can see it
is bulging. So I’m going to take that one out first. Often there is this hot glue that they put
around some of these components, I guess just to help hold them in place or something. Sometimes it comes off easily, other times
not so easily. Anyway, it is 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. OK, 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 isI 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, then I
go back and do the second one. However, for some bizarre reason, the lead
just pulled right out of this capacitor this time instead of coming out of the board. It could be something to do with the fact
it was already leaking, you can see the leaky residue on the board where it used to be. The lead was being unusually stubborn. 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. OK, 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 anyone
buys them. OK, so you may notice that the new capacitor
is a 1000 microfarads just like the old one, but it is 25v instead of 16. That’s fine, you can always substitute a
higher voltage. But you may notice it is 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. OK 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 they always mark the negative
side with a little stripe. Usually the boards are marked like this too,
but this board they have 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 in the holes. Now the leg spacing is slightly off on these
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. OK, 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. These new ones actually fit perfectly flush,
which is re-assuring. 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 is 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 bend them in like this,
then I’m going to put some 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 of the soldering is done, this
is how it looks. I guess that will 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 ot the board, you’ll see that they actually melted the plastic on the
back to hold it in place. So. there is no real way to take these off. But, I think what I’ll do is I’ll start
by unsoldering these things here and we’ll go from there. OK, so, again I don’t have any fancy de-soldering
equipment so I’m just going to have to use solder wick, or desoldering braid as some
people call it. That’s all I’ve got. But it works. It just takes patience. So, you can see I have this one desoldered,
and I can actually move it, so you know it is 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. OK, so now it’s time to see if it will come
loose. And it does. It wasn’t really 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. OK, so now it is 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 down unscrewing. 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 2 years, though. So I’m pretty sure it is discharged, but
I don’t want to take any chances so I’m going to go through the discharge 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. OK, 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. OK, 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 it in a bowl with some vinegar
and let it soak for a few hours. OK, so I let it soak for about 3 hours and
now I’m going to 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. OK, so I’m going to mix it up really well. And then I’m just going to put some small
amounts inside the 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 resolder the two leads here and
I think that will be it. All right, so this board is finished. I have gone back and re-inspected all of the
capacitors to make sure I didn’t put any of them in backwards on accident. It has been known. I’ve put the back back on it. The battery compartment is resoldered in and
the epoxy is cured, so this thing is ready to test. Now I’ll be honest, I don’t know if this
thing’s going to work. You know, I think I’ve already established
on my channel that even when things do go to plan, I’m still going to produce the
video anyway, so, I guess we’ll find out here shortly. Well, it will probably take me about 10 minutes
to put this back in the machine. It is with great anticipation that I reassemble
this computer. All right, so this is it. I’ve got my fire extinguisher ready. I’d like to point out I’ve never seen
this computer work, I really don’t know what’s going to happen here. So here we go. I’m going to 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 Mac Scrolls
and found a mention of the clicking…It says if you put a disk in the floppy and it goes
away, then to ignore it because it is the disk drive making the sound. So I’ll try that. So, I’m going to put a boot disk in here
and 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 the 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. All right, I’ve been working on this project
about a week and I’ve got kind of a mess here and I think it’s time to clean up and
move on to something else. Now I just want to kind of let you know where
this is going to go. I’m pretty sure all of 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 since 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 old and that does happen. And there’s a lot of burn-in 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 some time 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 is 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. It was a little long, but hopefully educational. Anyway, stick around because, as always, I’ve
got more stuff coming!
