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Apple Macintosh TV restore.

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First post, by Intel486dx33

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Hello, Received my non-working Macintosh TV today which I purchased on eBay for Cheap because the guy said it was not working and had been stored in his basement for over 25 years.
Luckily he double boxed the mac and wrapped real good in bubble wrap so it arrived intact without any damage from shipping.

First thing I did was to open up the rear and remove the logic board for inspection.
It appeared to be in not to bad of condition. A little dusty but okay. Even the Nicad battery had not ruptured and leaked all over the logic board.
Which was one of the things I was concerned about when I purchased it.
The Logic board bay has a little rust but nothing major. Some WD40 should clean that right up.

So I have a working Macintosh Performa 575 which looks almost identical to this Mac TV. But the logic boards are a little different but the logic board socket contacts are the same.
So I put the Performa logic board into my MacTV and turn it on. Shabam ! It worked. Even the the display is in really good shape with no distortion in the CRT image.
Works better than my Performa 575.

So I then did a thorough inspection of the MacTV logic board, Cleaned it up a little and put in a NEW battery. I cleaned up the contacts and put it back in the MacTV.
Shabam again ! It worked. So now the MacTV working with it's original logic board.

I took the MacTV inside and hooked it up to an antenna. Awwww, It did not work. When I switch to TV mode the MacTV tries to initialize the TV tuner but all I get is a black screen.
I tried different antennas but to no avail. I get not response from the MacTV after it switches to TV mode. It will not respond and will not switch back to PC mode.
I have to power cycle the computer in order to get to work again.

So what do you think ?

Software problem ?
Hardware problem ?
TV tuner problem ?
Logic board problem ?

The TV tuner does have quite a few caps on it. Maybe some of the caps on the TV tuner are bad ?
Or maybe the logic board has some bad caps still ?

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Last edited by Intel486dx33 on 2018-07-08, 00:48. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 11, by Intel486dx33

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More photos.

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Reply 2 of 11, by Intel486dx33

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Update:
When I open " Control panel > TV setup " I get this system crash and error message.
So I think my MacTV tuner software is corrupt.

Does anyone know where I can get original install disks for this MacTV
System 7.6.1
Or at least the MacTV tuner software ?

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Reply 5 of 11, by dionb

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Intel486dx33 wrote:

Yes, It is Macintosh computer with an Analog TV tuner build in.

So the question is: are there still analog broadcasts coming out of that cable you're sticking into it?

If so, there might be something wrong with the tuner. If not, the tuner is simply not getting the signal it understands.

Reply 6 of 11, by brostenen

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If you have an old device with a tv modulator, then you can test it with that. Like an Atari2600, C64, Amiga, Supernintendo or anything like that.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

001100 010010 011110 100001 101101 110011

Reply 7 of 11, by Intel486dx33

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Update:
It’s an old computer that has not been turned on in 25 years. It’s been stored in a basement so I guess I should expect some problems. I ran first aid on the disks and found no problems. So I can assume the disks image is okay.
ran Norton’s disk utility on hard drive and found no bad sectors or corruption.
Had problems with the cdrom and floppy drive so I took them apart and cleaned them up. Lubercation and cleaning. Unfortunately the cdrom died. No power on. So I have to get a new scsi CD-ROM drive.
I was able to get the Apple TV setup program so I have that ready to install once I get the new cdrom installed.
This Mac has no Ethernet for networking.
So I am currently putting this restore on hold until I get the cdrom delivered.

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Reply 8 of 11, by chrismeyer6

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I was never a a mac guy but those were neat little systems. If you were to pick up a cheap digital converter box you'd be able to watch ether clear qam or ota broadcast channels with it. But since it has an analog ntsc tuner it sadly won't be able to tune the new atsc 1.0 digital signals

Reply 9 of 11, by Intel486dx33

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Good idea.
I might try this one.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/191851663239

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Reply 10 of 11, by Intel486dx33

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Well, I have everything working but the internal SCSI CDROM is broken.
I was able to obtain an external Apple SCSI CDROM that works so I can use that with this AppleTV computer.

This computer works really well for an old computer. The Display is like NEW with no distortion.
It has been stored for 25 years with little use. I performed a health check of the computer with no problems.
I ran Nortons utilities and everything pass. No bad sectors on hard-drive and CPU and ram is good.
Display pass test too.

I have also purchased an Apple Quicktake 150 camera for taking authentic 1995 Photos.
It was actually build by Eastman Kodak for Apple.

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Reply 11 of 11, by Intel486dx33

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I was able to find a CDROM replacement. ( Very hard to find ).
Now I can complete this restore.

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