Hello Everyone,
I've been lurking a bit, and I've fervently absorbed hours of @Branchus YouTube content. Your perspectives are greatly respected and appreciated.
So: I've been a vintage collector (read, borderline hoarder with a vague curatorial philosophy) for years. I've been lucky enough to come across lots of great finds and not have to put too big a financial investment in to my collection. Now I'm trying to take stock and really decide where the value and enjoyment in my collection comes from... clean up and curate what's valuable, and either sell, give away or ethically recycle the rest. (Tale as old as time around here I'd expect)
Many years ago I was gifted a Macintosh IIfx. I was fairly ignorant at the time, but it was from a client I was working for and I was assured it had been A BEAST back in the day. I didn't have space for the whole thing so I pulled the board, cards and HDD, and discarded the rest (it pains me to admit that now). It's been sitting on my museum wall for about 15 years. After doing some contemporary research I've discovered that it's an AVID MEDIA COMPOSER I box. It's got all the amazing cards. A full suite. RasterOps PaintBoard Prism GT video, DigiDesign ProTools card, ATTO Silicon Express IV Fast SCSI, NuvoTech NuvoLink II Ethernet, and the AVID Base+Composer and Janus MJPEG boards... all connecting cables... and the whole thing collecting a little dust and UV but in a carefully climate and humidity controlled setting. There is a tiny bit of capacitor induced corrosion but the open air display has minimized it and I can find no PCB lead degradation. I'm fairly adept at SMD rework and I've already ordered a cap replacement kit. I'm going to get it properly tended to no matter what. Incidentally if anyone on these forums has more knowledge or experience of the AVID MC I system I'd LOVE some more insights in to it. I do have a chain of 9.1GB SCSI drives I could attempt to get going... but I'm curious if my RaSCSI can emulate such madness
Aaaaaaanyway, I know I could bench it and mock up a modern PSU, but that baby deserves some respect, so I was looking for IIfx chassis on Craigslist and eBay. Accessible history suggests that the IIfx is the white wale it is often reported to be, and I've only found ones that are either precious in their own right or KNACKERED. So I put my sights on a standard Mac II. I figured I'd find something with nice plastics but awful battery leakage and swap things in, mount the destroyed board on my museum wall as an homage and get that beast up. Lo and behold I found a full Macintosh II IN ORIGINAL BOX with foams and its original mouse and power cord... apparently excellent condition, with some paperwork and provenance for $300 delivered. I jumped on it.
I opened my "new" Macintosh II with joy, and it was in fact as advertised. EXCELLENT condition, and entirely stock... No PMMU, no IIx ROM, no upgraded SWIM.... original video card, 40MB SCSI and 800k floppy. Soldered VARTA batteries "Made in West Germany"
. No leakage. Visible but apparently minor electrolyte corrosion.
<EXECUTIVE SUMMARY>
I've got both a clean FANCY IIfx board set and a clean STOCK Mac II. It's an embarrassment of riches.
What would you good folks do?
</EXECUTIVE SUMMARY>
I will obviously clean, polish, recap and re-battery both systems in the least invasive way possible. My instinct is to swap in the IIfx board, get it a modern 128MB RAM kit, a SuperDrive, and put 7.6.1 on it, and just make the killer 68k mac of all time... with AVID and ProTools if I can find them... and relegate the Macintosh II stock board to a nice, grounded, climate controlled place on my museum wall, but then my IIfx will have a II faceplate, and it provenance will be nearly wiped clean.
HAAALLLLLP!
I've been lurking a bit, and I've fervently absorbed hours of @Branchus YouTube content. Your perspectives are greatly respected and appreciated.
So: I've been a vintage collector (read, borderline hoarder with a vague curatorial philosophy) for years. I've been lucky enough to come across lots of great finds and not have to put too big a financial investment in to my collection. Now I'm trying to take stock and really decide where the value and enjoyment in my collection comes from... clean up and curate what's valuable, and either sell, give away or ethically recycle the rest. (Tale as old as time around here I'd expect)
Many years ago I was gifted a Macintosh IIfx. I was fairly ignorant at the time, but it was from a client I was working for and I was assured it had been A BEAST back in the day. I didn't have space for the whole thing so I pulled the board, cards and HDD, and discarded the rest (it pains me to admit that now). It's been sitting on my museum wall for about 15 years. After doing some contemporary research I've discovered that it's an AVID MEDIA COMPOSER I box. It's got all the amazing cards. A full suite. RasterOps PaintBoard Prism GT video, DigiDesign ProTools card, ATTO Silicon Express IV Fast SCSI, NuvoTech NuvoLink II Ethernet, and the AVID Base+Composer and Janus MJPEG boards... all connecting cables... and the whole thing collecting a little dust and UV but in a carefully climate and humidity controlled setting. There is a tiny bit of capacitor induced corrosion but the open air display has minimized it and I can find no PCB lead degradation. I'm fairly adept at SMD rework and I've already ordered a cap replacement kit. I'm going to get it properly tended to no matter what. Incidentally if anyone on these forums has more knowledge or experience of the AVID MC I system I'd LOVE some more insights in to it. I do have a chain of 9.1GB SCSI drives I could attempt to get going... but I'm curious if my RaSCSI can emulate such madness
Aaaaaaanyway, I know I could bench it and mock up a modern PSU, but that baby deserves some respect, so I was looking for IIfx chassis on Craigslist and eBay. Accessible history suggests that the IIfx is the white wale it is often reported to be, and I've only found ones that are either precious in their own right or KNACKERED. So I put my sights on a standard Mac II. I figured I'd find something with nice plastics but awful battery leakage and swap things in, mount the destroyed board on my museum wall as an homage and get that beast up. Lo and behold I found a full Macintosh II IN ORIGINAL BOX with foams and its original mouse and power cord... apparently excellent condition, with some paperwork and provenance for $300 delivered. I jumped on it.
I opened my "new" Macintosh II with joy, and it was in fact as advertised. EXCELLENT condition, and entirely stock... No PMMU, no IIx ROM, no upgraded SWIM.... original video card, 40MB SCSI and 800k floppy. Soldered VARTA batteries "Made in West Germany"
. No leakage. Visible but apparently minor electrolyte corrosion.<EXECUTIVE SUMMARY>
I've got both a clean FANCY IIfx board set and a clean STOCK Mac II. It's an embarrassment of riches.
What would you good folks do?
</EXECUTIVE SUMMARY>
I will obviously clean, polish, recap and re-battery both systems in the least invasive way possible. My instinct is to swap in the IIfx board, get it a modern 128MB RAM kit, a SuperDrive, and put 7.6.1 on it, and just make the killer 68k mac of all time... with AVID and ProTools if I can find them... and relegate the Macintosh II stock board to a nice, grounded, climate controlled place on my museum wall, but then my IIfx will have a II faceplate, and it provenance will be nearly wiped clean.
HAAALLLLLP!
). I searched the board and found only two traces that were visibly severed, connecting to the power button area.
Luckily I'd gotten everything, so the software install can remain contemporary. The system must have come with 1MB of RAM, because it had 4x 256KB SIMMs and 4x 1MB SIMMs. I added the 256KB modules back so now I have a pretty humorous 5MB of RAM. I've ordered some 