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Macintosh II (Acquisition #009)
🕑 Added 2022-06-07 05:57:30 +0000 UTC
In February 2005, an ad came up in the classifieds for "Old Macintosh Computers". This included IIsi, IIci, LCII, Powerbook 150 and others. I answered but apparently offered too little. The seller got offended and angry about it and further correspondence was going to be awkward, so I contacted him from another email address offering to buy them at the price he was looking for. He then flaunted it to my first email address that someone was offering a reasonable price... Still awkward.
He had got the Macs from an acquaintance who was in publishing in the 80’s. He mentioned there were a couple Macintosh II’s that he still had to pick up. I was interested! The Mac II was my ‘dream machine’ in the 80’s. I told him about my 6100/60AV that I was no longer using. He suggested a trade. He wanted to put a 210MHz G3 upgrade card in the 6100 so he said I could remove and keep the RAM, HD and AV card. I figured it would not be hard to get another 6100. In the end, it took 10 years to find another (see last post). In trade, I got the two Mac Ii’s plus a 12” High Resolution Monochrome and 13” High Resolution Colour displays. The 12” was sun baked and cracked in the corners of the screen bezel. I did something wrong in my cleaning and reassembly because it started arcing pretty bad when I turned it on. The 13” was very yellowed, the brightness knob was maxed out and some burn-in. Two extended keyboard I’s ,which were very cool, although yellowed. This was before the invention of retrobright, so whether a machine was yellowed or not was an important factor when buying. He also asked if I was interested in a Performa 5200 for $40. No!
Retrobright 2011
I did the peroxide treatment on the empty case of the older Mac II in 2011. It came 95% back to normal colour. Same result from the keyboard. Metal shielding inside the box somewhat corroded and it will be hard to avoid getting peroxide under the metal. So, I cut the plastic welds and removed the shielding. I used a glue gun to re-attach the shield upon reassembly.
The older Mac II was made in 1987 and had the large, gold-tinted 5 1/4” 40MB Quantum Hard Drive. The computer would not start though. Believing it was was toast, I pulled out the motherboard and hung it on the wall. The motherboard had two 1/2AA Varta batteries soldered to the motherboard. I've never seen a Varta leak, so I left them in place. Likewise, the capacitors were the Tantalum type, not the Electrolytic, so no worries about capacitor leakage. About 5 years later, I read that a dead battery on the motherboard would prevent startup. I searched the message boards and found instructions on jump-starting. I put the motherboard back in the case and it worked!! I would go on to make a video on jump-starting the Mac II because I knew I would forget how to do it.
Large Quantum drive
The machine had 5MB of RAM. The OS was System 6.0.7. Unfortunately after an hour of it's new-found life, the Hard Drive made a loud rattle and died for good.
I took the Video Card out of the other Mac II, added it to the second of six NuBus slots in this computer and I was able to drive two displays with a continuous desktop. No configuration was necessary.
Processor / Math Coprocessor
