VOGONS


First post, by xjas

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

...of pre-Intel Macs down to three. I love these things but I don't think I'll ever defend the 'build quality' of Apple's hardware again. Shoddy capacitors, leaky batteries, brittle plastic & barely-adequate PSUs seem to be the order of the day, not to mention Apple's love affair with planned obsolescence. Every single one I had needed something repaired and I just didn't have enough time or energy or motivation to deal with that.

Gone but not forgotten:
PowerMac 6100AV - case destroyed by "modder" who owned a sawzall, apparently. Never found an HDI45->VGA adapter. Parted out.
PowerMac 7200 - Probably worked. Despite an infusion of parts from the 6100, still needed too much stuff to complete. Sold for $10 because that's better than nothing.
*Mint* Personal LaserWriter 300 😜 - one of the first desktop laser printers for home use. Apparently utterly impossible to drive it on anything beyond OS8, even if you could find all the adapters to hook it up. Useless paperweight. Given away.
PowerMac G5/2.3 dual-core - second-last, second-best G5 ever made. PSU became flakey (probably caps.) Sold.
Mac SE/30 - I really wanted this one to work, but the motherboard was destroyed by leaky battery. Just sold for parts.

The ones I kept:
Mac LC630 DOS-compatible - really interesting machine with a 68040 and a full 486DX2/66 system on a daughterboard. Currently doesn't boot, black screen.
PowerMac G4 Cube - iconic design, needs everything. Super flakey, rash of bad caps, and gives an L2 cache error on startup. I'll fix it eventually.
PowerMac G5/2.0 dual-processor - remarkably still working. In my office doing photoshop & audio editing duty. Who knows how long that will last.

Yes, that means out of all seven I had only one still works reliably and didn't develop any issues. Now I'm starting to wonder how long my x86 Macbook & Mac Minis are going to last. They don't seem to have the systematic issues that the G4s/G5s suffer from but they're also not as old.

I actually regret nothing about getting rid of the ones I got rid of. Taking a step back and knowing I was never going to restore them all was a breath of fresh air, and now I can focus on the projects I actually stand some chance of getting around to. Nice to lift some weight off my shoulders for once.

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 1 of 5, by nforce4max

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I still have a thing for vintage macs but the build quality was never good much like how it is now (expensive cancer), would have kept the G5 system but look into recapping the one you got as these systems will be hard to replace as the years tick by and they end up being semi rare. Intel Macs are cancer board level wise though the old ones are much easier to fix than anything current because the schematics for the boards are difficult to find. Lots of little things going bad on the boards and poor chip quality at times is costing shops a lot of money. I refuse to fix them along with all the modern ultra thin hot plates so I am not in the business anymore. I much prefer the older Dells and Thinkpads as they are easy to service like swapping parts and how there are only a couple of screw sizes unlike Apple where they might have two or three dozen screw sizes in one machine (some exaggeration but you get the point).

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.

Reply 2 of 5, by Jorpho

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Would it be so terrible to mention Macs in your subject line?

xjas wrote:

Never found an HDI45->VGA adapter.

To be clear, an HDI-45 to DB15 adapter plus a DB15 to VGA adapter would work fine in such an instance. I would doubt that an integrated HDI45 to VGA adapter even exists.

Reply 3 of 5, by Unknown_K

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I have stacks of old 68k and PPC macs from the 68000 SE's to the PCIE Model G5's. Build quality is ok for the most part outside of some plastic that ages badly and leaking caps (which I had to replace, but same thing on the PC side).

Apple did build some shitty laptops for a while relying too much on plastic to metal hinges that fail with age.

Fixing your collection is part of collecting.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 4 of 5, by Unknown_K

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

6100 machines can also use a PDS video card (with angle adapter) that uses the standard Apple video output (which also needs an adapter for VGA). Cheaper and easier to find. I have that HDI45 adapter and it wasn't that expensive or hard to find.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 5 of 5, by xjas

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

^^ I actually (still) have the PDS video card (it has s-video in & out too.) To be honest, the 6100 was hosed, I parted it out to save the 7200 which was in way better shape. And then I sold that.

I have no interest in "collecting" a bunch of machines I'll never use, I kept the two most interesting ones (and the one working one 😜) and the rest went to good homes. If I manage to get the G4 Cube & the LC630 back to 100% I'll have a nice little range of systems that covers everything I might want to do with them. (Ideally I'd run system 7 on the LC630, OS9+Tiger on the Cube & the remaining G5 is already running Leopard.)

I'd rather concentrate on a few machines than own one broken one of each & have an endless queue of unfinished projects.

Jorpho wrote:

To be clear, an HDI-45 to DB15 adapter plus a DB15 to VGA adapter would work fine in such an instance. I would doubt that an integrated HDI45 to VGA adapter even exists.

That was what I meant by "HDI45->VGA" (standard DB15 being a VGA-ish signal itself.) I didn't feel the need to elaborate on the whole thing in a oneliner.

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!