68kMLA Classic Interface
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| My next restore project: PB 540c | |
| Posted by: jefframsey on 2017-08-09 12:56:59 I have been eyeballing this 540c at my local scrapper's shop for about 6 months now. Finally asked about it and it was completely untouched since arriving at their shop - a retro bag of mystery! I struck a fair deal with the shop and took it home. I have a friend (who is a member here) who has offered to sell me a power supply for this machine for a very decent price, so I decided to take the plunge. (Is there such a thing as too many vintage Apple restoration projects?)   When I pulled back the battery release clasps, I could see that each of the battery compartments showed that familiar white glow of exposed electrolyte, as if the batteries were trying to say "Oh? You think it's bad when a computer releases all of it's magic smoke? Wait until you see what is hiding behind door number two!" Physically removing the batteries took an act of congress, but I finally got them both out. I quickly realized that there were indeed things that can leak out of a computer that are worse than smoke. I finished the dissection as I wanted to see just how bad the circuitry was. Over all, it does not look too bad. The battery contacts are the only corrosion I see on the logic board. They have a very "blue-green" corrosion on them, a lot less like something that someone spilled in the kitchen and a lot more like something that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bathed in at some point in the their youth.     Anyhow, down another restoration rabbit hole I go. Pics and updates as things progress. Oh, and one more thing: Does anyone have a right housing panel plastic piece for sale? It is part number 076-0265, circled in the following diagram:  | |
| Posted by: Schafeman on 2017-08-10 06:51:38 Nice! I have both a 520 and 520C i'm attempting to restore but running into (what I believe) are failing HDD's. Since those are 2.5" SCSI drives, options are very limited for replacement so I'm trying to figure out what to do. They both boot for now, but i'm running into a lot of disk corruption. | |
| Posted by: techknight on 2017-08-10 09:52:29 SCSI2SD PowerBook version. It is a little bit more pricey but what are your options? | |
| Posted by: Rajel on 2017-08-10 11:12:48 I do second the SCSI2SD Powerbook edition. Mine works great on my PB160. | |
| Posted by: jefframsey on 2017-08-11 07:16:42 Does the powerbook 520c and 540c have the same external plastic parts? Would the broken "right panel housing" that I asked about from a 520c fit onto a 540c? | |
| Posted by: 68krazy on 2017-08-11 10:12:33 Looking forward to seeing your progress with this! | |
| Posted by: Macdrone on 2017-08-12 09:20:33 yes the 520 is the same as the 540. only the C changes the screen. | |
| Posted by: jefframsey on 2017-08-26 21:33:01 After a trip to visit Macdrone, (who has almost everything Apple ever made in triplicate) he sold me a working power supply and an Asante Ethernet adapter for this machine. With the short time I had to work with him before leaving his place to take my daughter to move into her college dorm, we were unable to get the machine to show any signs of life. Once I got home, I removed the keyboard, reseated the CPU and RAM and still no dice. I then pulled the hard drive and tried it again...  After a happy Mac sound and what felt like an eternity, the screen lit up and came to life. It will boot from the floppy drive and everything seems to work except the hard drive and (of course) the batteries which I knew were toasted when I got the machine. The screen looks great and does not show any signs of dead pixels or bad spots. So the project continues. I need to come up with a hard drive (or SCSI2SD) as well as a right housing panel and then I think I will be onto something here. | |
| Posted by: jefframsey on 2017-08-30 12:38:16 I was able to get the hard drive to work again by reseating the SCSI bus cable. I then initialized the drive, loaded 7.5.3, updated to 7.5.5, and proceeded to install some software - After Dark 3.0, iCab 2.99b, The Oregon Trail, SimCity 2000, etc. Restore is coming along nicely...    | |
| Posted by: Rajel on 2017-08-31 11:49:28 Nice! iCab is surprisingly useful. | |
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