Nah, I don't look in other people's harddrives anymore. If everyone starts doing that, where would people like us get harddrives from? 😁

MaxWar wrote:

Sometimes the best surprise is a dead part :P […]
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Sometimes the best surprise is a dead part 😜

I found a mac Performa 6400/200 in the trash last year but just recently tried to power it up. Naturally it does not show any sign of life when i press power, even though it looks absolutely pristine, barely a speck of dust inside the thing.

5 minutes ago after inspecting the suspected power supply, i found a busted resistor.

Finaly a lead 😁

With old Macs it's frequently a dead CMOS battery that causes a no boot condition. I have a shoebox full of them just in case.

Im not even talking about data recovered after regular format ...

Im talking about a machine that still boots windows with the "my files" folder linked on the desktop.

Also recently i found a pentium 4 celeron that belonged to a travel agency, psu was dead, replaced it and the computer booted to windows. All their customers email still on it. Thousands of em... Seriously. In a freaking txt file to boot, not even on a protected database or anything.

sliderider wrote:

With old Macs it's frequently a dead CMOS battery that causes a no boot condition. I have a shoebox full of them just in case.

I read elsewhere that disconnecting the cmos battery in this case will allow boot. Sounds a bit weird to me, can you confirm if this is true?

Edit: I just checked the battery, definitely dead. So i will change both battery and resistor. This mac still had surprises for me 😜

Burnt resistors are a symptom, not a cause.

Indeed you are right, i replaced the resistor, plugged the psu to ac ( not connected to computer ) turned the switch on for a split second and heard a loud pop, now resistor is burned again, but fuse is still intact.

"Sorry this is turning of topic"

Its a shame the only other mac i have to not use same psu, i could at least test the computer.

MaxWar wrote:

Im not even talking about data recovered after regular format ...

Im talking about a machine that still boots windows with the "my files" folder linked on the desktop.

I think you might have missed the first part of my message. Either that person just doesn't know how to format it or left all those interesting things on there "for the lulz."

MaxWar wrote:

Indeed you are right, i replaced the resistor, plugged the psu to ac ( not connected to computer ) turned the switch on for a split second and heard a loud pop, now resistor is burned again, but fuse is still intact.

"Sorry this is turning of topic"

Its a shame the only other mac i have to not use same psu, i could at least test the computer.

This is a good site for those Macs. I'm not sure if there's a repair guide, but at least there's good information there for if you ever do get yours running. I have a 6500/250 but I never had to have anything repaired on it.

http://www.zone6400.com/

Thanks for the tip, i used this site for the "taking apart" how to, i checked again but they have nothing technical about psus. Or psu repair.

I checked again and there are several busted parts in that psu.

MaxWar wrote:

Thanks for the tip, i used this site for the "taking apart" how to, i checked again but they have nothing technical about psus. Or psu repair.

I checked again and there are several busted parts in that psu.

Oh, yes, you definitely need help taking it apart. I won't forget the first time I had to open mine. What a mess that was.