I recently came into possession of a Classic II from a friend, and thought I'd share a few successes and oopses I've had so far.
Cosmetically, it was in OK shape except for a big crack in the case.
I figured a little retrobriting and acetone would work. Well. the retrobrite went fine, but the acetone ran out of the crack and ate some of the exterior, oh well.
The logic board was in serious need of a recap, which went smoothly.
Then the worst happened. I dropped the CRT. I was so distraught I didn't take a pic of it. A quick bid on eBay landed me a replacement. Luckily I saved the yoke because the Classic II has the rev B connector with exposed pins, rather than the traditional enclosed yoke connector. Installing the replacement CRT and recapped board...and the Classic II chimed! However, I couldn't get it to boot from the hard drive, so I used a DB-25 BlueSCSI to get a successful boot. I noticed that if I did a restart, the Classic II would hang on the 50% gray raster screen before the corners tuck in and the arrow appears. On the next boot, I got a Sad Mac chime.
Uh oh. Pulling out the extra RAM, and the behavior repeated - successful first boot, raster screen on second, Sad Mac chime on third.
Luckily I watched a replay of Bruce's @Branchus recent live stream where he rescued an LC 575 with Sad Mac chime by replacing one of the RAM chips soldered on the logic board. I figured I was getting some kind of intermittent RAM problem due to cap juice (no, I don't have an ultrasonic cleaner - I did the ol' IPA and toothbrush treatment). I fired up the hot air station and removed U13 and U14 next to a cluster of caps that I had replaced, and sure enough, I got a strong whiff of rotten fish smell. The pads and traces looked fine, so I cleaned the area and the RAM chips, reinstalled them and...
No more Sad Mac chime!
I still couldn't get the hard drive to respond, so I measured voltages at the molex connector, and got slightly more than 10V and 4 V. Definitely low.
What's next? Clearly, a recap of the analog board is needed to hopefully get the 12V and 5V rails up to spec. I also need to figure out a solution for the yoke, because the screen is distorted in the upper right corner, and much to my dismay I noted that I'm missing a magnet. It likely broke off when I dropped the original CRT and I didn't notice until I installed the yoke on the replacement CRT. If anyone has a suggestion on a replacement yoke for a rev B analog board, or ideas on a replacement magnet, I'd welcome either.
All in all I had a few successes (retrobrite case, logic board recap, removal and reinstall of RAM soldered on the logic board) and some oopses (dropped CRT, acetone fail on the case, broken magnet on the yoke). But hey - this is why we do this... to bring back to life an old, classic compact Macintosh.
Cosmetically, it was in OK shape except for a big crack in the case.
I figured a little retrobriting and acetone would work. Well. the retrobrite went fine, but the acetone ran out of the crack and ate some of the exterior, oh well.
The logic board was in serious need of a recap, which went smoothly.
Then the worst happened. I dropped the CRT. I was so distraught I didn't take a pic of it. A quick bid on eBay landed me a replacement. Luckily I saved the yoke because the Classic II has the rev B connector with exposed pins, rather than the traditional enclosed yoke connector. Installing the replacement CRT and recapped board...and the Classic II chimed! However, I couldn't get it to boot from the hard drive, so I used a DB-25 BlueSCSI to get a successful boot. I noticed that if I did a restart, the Classic II would hang on the 50% gray raster screen before the corners tuck in and the arrow appears. On the next boot, I got a Sad Mac chime.
Uh oh. Pulling out the extra RAM, and the behavior repeated - successful first boot, raster screen on second, Sad Mac chime on third.
Luckily I watched a replay of Bruce's @Branchus recent live stream where he rescued an LC 575 with Sad Mac chime by replacing one of the RAM chips soldered on the logic board. I figured I was getting some kind of intermittent RAM problem due to cap juice (no, I don't have an ultrasonic cleaner - I did the ol' IPA and toothbrush treatment). I fired up the hot air station and removed U13 and U14 next to a cluster of caps that I had replaced, and sure enough, I got a strong whiff of rotten fish smell. The pads and traces looked fine, so I cleaned the area and the RAM chips, reinstalled them and...
No more Sad Mac chime!
I still couldn't get the hard drive to respond, so I measured voltages at the molex connector, and got slightly more than 10V and 4 V. Definitely low.
What's next? Clearly, a recap of the analog board is needed to hopefully get the 12V and 5V rails up to spec. I also need to figure out a solution for the yoke, because the screen is distorted in the upper right corner, and much to my dismay I noted that I'm missing a magnet. It likely broke off when I dropped the original CRT and I didn't notice until I installed the yoke on the replacement CRT. If anyone has a suggestion on a replacement yoke for a rev B analog board, or ideas on a replacement magnet, I'd welcome either.
All in all I had a few successes (retrobrite case, logic board recap, removal and reinstall of RAM soldered on the logic board) and some oopses (dropped CRT, acetone fail on the case, broken magnet on the yoke). But hey - this is why we do this... to bring back to life an old, classic compact Macintosh.
Last edited:
