Recent content by Garrett

Pin 7 must be grounded on the edge connector. I used a paper clip as a little jumper. All you need to do is make contact. Yes, a standard Apple serial cable will work fine!

I'm gearing up to do something similar. I plan to rip out the old treads/risers and install oak direct on the stringers themselves. So much harder with an infant! I can't make too much noise or dust like I used to...

Might be a "hot take" but I really love listening to Power Windows. I know it's synth heavy, but if I want to get away from that I can always put on Vapor Trails! Rush is my favorite band too. I've been fortunate enough to have seen them live 4 times.

I’m not sure what the FF00 exactly is, but I agree that the 3 is a RAM fault. The minor code is marked by the FFxx as seen below, except this guide shows nothing for the 00 you’re seeing… I wish I was more help!

The item number is 335176346660 from seller “DasherDeals”. I thought the price point was too good for me to try my hand at making my own. Time is money!

Exciting update! My replacement chips came and I started with U1C. Little flux and hot air - came right off. Unfortunately no change, same sad Mac code. From there I moved onto U4B. Success! I was greeted with a flashing floppy disk. I then added the RAM card that came with the portable (turned...

GREAT QUESTION! I couldn’t find any utilities out there that would tell me “yup, you have 32k of cache memory”. I resorted to running a couple benchmarks before and after the card installation. Using Apple Personal Diagnostics, results are below. This is System 7.1.1, 32 bit addressing, 256...

To come full circle, I did end up repairing my cache cards ( I had two that weren’t working after a recap). A careful examination of the SRAM chip traces near the cap at the lower right corner revealed a few breaks. Removing the chip, I found even more. Here’s a photo of said chip so you know...

Any insight on when the kit version of this might be available? Thank you!

I’ll admit I don’t quite know why the portable needs 32 chips to comprise a total of 1MB. Would be be similar to four sticks of 8 chip 256k RAM in an SE? I wish I knew the logic of what was going on. Either way, I was able to perform additional testing. It appears the error is isolated to RAM...

I had a bit of time last night and decided to try the serial diagnostics. Here’s my setup- it’s crude but worked just fine! On the other end was my PowerBook 1400 running OS 8.6 and ZTerm software. I tried MacTerminal but it wasn’t playing nice. Immediately on power up, I started receiving...

I may have heard about this, serial diagnostic mode? The only documented info I could find is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140921020853/https://mac68k.info/wiki/display/mac68k/Diagnostic+Mode I have an SE/30 with working serial ports, and a bit of patience (ha). Would be fun to give...

Beautiful! And this one has cutouts for mounting tabs 😉

I’ve been sitting on one too many Portables needing a recap. Yesterday I decided to get moving and actually complete one. Apart from these boards sucking a TON of heat from my iron, the job was straightforward. Keep in mind I did not test this board before the recap as to not cause damage to...

Yesterday I decided to open up a Color Classic I’ve had on the bench for a while. My Post-It note said that the analog board was inside, but the caps were removed… cool! I opened it up and got to replacing them. Strangely, I noticed some flux residue and fresh solder on the leads of the flyback...