Hello everyone!
I recently restored my Macintosh II with the help of a good friend (and my cat).
Last time I turned it on was almost 20 years ago, so a recap was definitely in in order.
The PSU was in good condition, no signs of leakage and most of the caps tested were at most 20% off spec, we replaced all of them anyway.
The logic board was full of capacitor leakage, but after a run through the dish washer and thorough cleaning afterwards, it looked like brand new.
No traces were thankfully harmed.
There was some superficial corrosion on the solder mask on one, which we fixed, but it was otherwise ok.
We replaced all the caps with tantalums as they match the board really well.
I made a mistake in the quantity of the axial caps, so I didn’t replace two of the stock ones on the board.
There was no battery leakage, as I had snipped the batteries ages ago.
Soldered battery holders in their place and put some MacBatt CR2032 adapters with extension cord so I can change them/turn them off without opening the case.
Installed a BlueSCSI v1 and ran an SD extension cable through the NuBus cover, along with the CR2032 battery extensions.
Finally, the last piece of the puzzle, I replaced the HMMU with a proper MMU. I tried my luck on an XC68851 on ebay and it worked!
So after I got it up and running, first thing was to run A/UX
I tried some ready made images:
A/UX 1.1.1 boots fast, but it’s pretty barebones
On the other hand, A/UX 3.1 takes 5 minutes to load and is pretty slow to use as it takes up almost all of the (5meg) RAM:
I guess the sweet spot is A/UX 2, but I’ll have to install it myself, as I didn’t find any ready made images.
Anyone willing to share one is welcome of course!
I want to upgrade the memory next, I currently have 4x256K and 4x1MB. I’m thinking about getting 4x4MB and trickle down the 4x1MB to the bank that 4x256K currently are, if I’m not mistaken, this config is supported by a non Superdrive updated Mac II with proper MMU, but please correct me if it isn’t.
Also looking to get a RaSCSI, will I be able to install A/UX and connect to Ethernet with it? I’m going to get an external one so I can use with any of my Macs
I recently restored my Macintosh II with the help of a good friend (and my cat).
Last time I turned it on was almost 20 years ago, so a recap was definitely in in order.
The PSU was in good condition, no signs of leakage and most of the caps tested were at most 20% off spec, we replaced all of them anyway.
The logic board was full of capacitor leakage, but after a run through the dish washer and thorough cleaning afterwards, it looked like brand new.
No traces were thankfully harmed.
There was some superficial corrosion on the solder mask on one, which we fixed, but it was otherwise ok.
We replaced all the caps with tantalums as they match the board really well.
I made a mistake in the quantity of the axial caps, so I didn’t replace two of the stock ones on the board.
There was no battery leakage, as I had snipped the batteries ages ago.
Soldered battery holders in their place and put some MacBatt CR2032 adapters with extension cord so I can change them/turn them off without opening the case.
Installed a BlueSCSI v1 and ran an SD extension cable through the NuBus cover, along with the CR2032 battery extensions.
Finally, the last piece of the puzzle, I replaced the HMMU with a proper MMU. I tried my luck on an XC68851 on ebay and it worked!
So after I got it up and running, first thing was to run A/UX
I tried some ready made images:
A/UX 1.1.1 boots fast, but it’s pretty barebones
On the other hand, A/UX 3.1 takes 5 minutes to load and is pretty slow to use as it takes up almost all of the (5meg) RAM:
I guess the sweet spot is A/UX 2, but I’ll have to install it myself, as I didn’t find any ready made images.
Anyone willing to share one is welcome of course!
I want to upgrade the memory next, I currently have 4x256K and 4x1MB. I’m thinking about getting 4x4MB and trickle down the 4x1MB to the bank that 4x256K currently are, if I’m not mistaken, this config is supported by a non Superdrive updated Mac II with proper MMU, but please correct me if it isn’t.
Also looking to get a RaSCSI, will I be able to install A/UX and connect to Ethernet with it? I’m going to get an external one so I can use with any of my Macs