Recent content by Paolo B

No, I don’t think so. Generally speaking, I prefer preservation to restoration, so if they get rusty I de-rust and re-use them.

It’s an interesting one, my experience is that sourcing exact spares for our beloved vintage stuff may turn really difficult. Generally speaking, it‘s a mixed bag of metric and imperial screws. At that size, hard to tell one from the other by naked eye, at least for me. So I just check and...

There are a couple of steps for which it is necessary to severe and isolate some traces. I managed to find some more elegant workaround. No rocket science, just some re-wiring from the back. Can’t share any pics now, though, but it is definitely possible.

I did the mod a few years ago, so I don’t quite remember the details by heart. I need to open the machine and compare side by side what I have vs what @JDW suggested. Surely, though, I wanted to have something reversible and non destructive, so I had to find workarounds for the trace cutting...

Yes, I have a Mystic, too. Sourcing a donor LC575 has been relatively easy in Japan. I actually made the VGA mod following your excellent tutorial, even though I am kind of proud I made the whole thing in a non-destructive, reversible way. I remember I choose the machine with the cleanest...

As far as I know, those magnetic bands are used for fine tuning the geometry of the frame. They seem to me typical factory sealed stuff not meant to be touched.

Proper degaussing is probably the first thing to test. In “another forum” it is reported that the CRT degaussing coil connector and / or thermistor may be at fault. Can’t further check on my machines, as I am now in the midst of a relocation.

I have 3 of those fancy machines, all restored and tuned at different specs, including one with 640x480 mod. All of them are showing the defect you report, to a different extent. My guess is that the CRT just degrades unevenly over the years.

As usual with capacitors: Same capacitance > must have Same voltage > nice to have, but can be higher (e.g. replacing 10 V with 24V would be OK) Same size, distance between the leads > must have / nice to have as long as they fit nicely Same temperature rating > nice to have, can of course be...

Most likely the drive is mechanically at fault: typically, the parking position bumper got sticky and the arm got kind of glued to it. You may try to open the drive and check it, bit it’s of course a very risky move.

Hi All, Thought it would be nice for a once to post something beyond the usual Maxell mayhem or corroded traces due to leaking caps. The pictures in this post are showing some renditions of “Mr Macintosh”, by the Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon (1934 - 2005). Mr Macintosh even made it into the...

Unfortunately there’s none. At least not that I know. The Portable display has a high failure rate, apparently due to some “poor“ materials (lamination glue) that did not age gracefully. Out of the 4 units I had, 3 developed dead lines over the years, only one (touching wood) is still in mint...

Discharging the CRT is always the way to go. It’s indeed not that complicated, there are plenty of tutorials on how to make it in the safest way. For example, download the Larry Pina book and you will find good guidance there. However, it’s also good to know that almost all the compact Macs use...

I must admit that sometimes it’s really baffling to see how premium and expensive products are in fact poorly designed and engineered. That hinge is a compendium of how not to design a mechanically stressed component, mixing fragile metal cast, concentrated loads and sharp corners. Good that...

The plastic tube is threaded, for allowing the fine positioning of the ferrite core wrt to the coils.