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As I just discovered this morning, the Exabyte 8505 tape drive (and likely others in this series such as 8500, 8200, 8205, 8700, 8705) are affected by the leaky SMD capacitor plague. These drives have a vertically mounted power converter section which naturally has leaky capacitors dumping...

That depends entirely on whether the external 5v video power line is disabled when the Portable is in sleep mode. I would have to check. It's a switched supply, so if power is cut to the external video pin in sleep mode then it would be safe to remove. Note that the external video port has a...

Stock counts are low on the Mac Portable VGA adapter, but more will be on the way soon. This product does what it says: Mac Portable digital video out port -> 640x480 VGA. Doesn't convert the other way, sorry. https://androda.work/product/vga-adapter-for-macintosh-portable/

Normally the main power rail is intended to be at 5.2v. But I've seen these systems at 5.15v, 5.26v, etc. The hybrid module's feedback resistors are, I believe, mostly 1% or 0.5% tolerance. 5.3v is 1.9% different than 5.2v, and not likely to be an issue. But it does show a little drifting...

Generally speaking it's safe to connect or disconnect things from the motherboard when the main 5v rail drops to a solid zero volts. My listing states to wait awhile because these are supercapacitors and if you accidentally bump the legs with something conductive you're going to get a huge...

I've done a schematic diff between older and newer BlueSCSI versions to remind myself what the issue was, and wrote a section on the BlueSCSI V2 Wiki on the subject: https://github.com/BlueSCSI/BlueSCSI-v2/wiki/Hardware#hardware-tweaks--fixes The issue was pull resistors, and the instructions...

A Backlit Portable as shipped by Apple is capable of addressing up to 8 MB of RAM. There is one megabyte on the motherboard, and my RAM card design provides an additional 7. But the Backlit Portable will only see 4MB of that 7 when in the RAM slot, because Apple changed the RAM decode logic...

March 2, 2024 Board Meeting Attendance: Jacob (Androda), Justin (jdmcs), Kai Robinson, Bruce (Branchus) Absent: Josh (Drake), Ron (Ron’s Computer Videos), Christian (fogWraith), Eric (eric) Agenda: Item 1: Governance Documents Action Items: Androda to recompile all the notes and edits...

There are two issues present which were causing the "wake from sleep" problems. First, the Pi Foundation decided to make all IO pins on the RP2040 default to "pull down" mode. This means that instead of simply "floating" (not changing the electrical state of their connections), they actively...

I would vote yes, this should be a feature. Perhaps "MountTheSDCardEvenThoughItsDangerous=1"

The Mac Portable Adapter for BlueSCSI V2 is getting an update. You no longer will need to select a BlueSCSI hardware version because the bracket is universal for all Desktop models, old and new. Brackets are printing now, will update the listing once they are done.

To my knowledge there does not exist an official BlueSCSI V2 PCB which is explicitly for the Mac Portable's oddball 34 pin SCSI connector. That means this is a hardware fork basically. We didn't make a Portable-specific PCB to avoid stocking machine-specific variations. There are too many...

Conical tips are generally panned, chisel and knife style are usually better overall. There's nothing wrong with having several tips. These irons are different than older styles in that you aren't swapping out a chunk of metal in front of a heater, so they do cost more. But they work well and...

Kind of already did pick one - standard size handle. There are tips available which work for small soldering, and the handle being larger seems more ergonomic. You'll probably find that people recommend larger soldering tips than you might expect - big ones work just as well for certain use...

The standard size handle was my pick. The miniature one I can absolutely see being useful in some situations, but standard size tips have worked fine so far.

I presently use the Hakko FX-100 system. It has sped up my assembly work considerably from the previous FX-951. Generally I recommend the 400C tips for lead-free, 350 doesn't cut it with lead-free solder and ground planes. The soldering station is expensive, and the tips are really weird...

February 3, 2024 Board Meeting Attendance: Christian (fogWraith), Jacob (Androda), Justin (jdmcs), Kai Robinson, Bruce (Branchus), Eric (eric) Absent: Josh (Drake), Ron (Ron’s Computer Videos) Agenda: Item 1: Forum and Board Governance Documents Notes: There have been many situations over...

Sorry for the late response. Glad you have it resolved though. Could you post a link to the Mac PKG fixer tool for future use?

BlueSCSI design update: The DB25 model went to the gym and lost some weight, now the PCB is only as wide as the DB25 connector. This should help situations like the IIci where SCSI is right next to the display port (wide connector next to a wide adapter)...

Surprisingly, several people have messaged me recently asking for recreation cables of the Mac Portable M5120 Backlight Upgrade. I didn't think enough of them survived for it to make sense to have a product listing on my site, but here we are...