Finally Purchased an Original Macintosh 128k for $300

[zastin17]

So I just purchased a Original Macintosh 128k that has been upgraded by the original owner who said who used to be an old electronics technician. Everything about it is original except that he upgraded the ram to 2mb by removing the old ram, Added sockets and installed new ram into the sockets.

He is the original owner since the purchase in 1984. It comes with a fully working External 80MB CMS Hard drive with the original motherboard, 400k floppy drive, keyboard and mouse. Based on the pictures it looks to be in excellent physical condition, a kensington system saver, hypercard and supercard software with the original boxes, and the Original soft-cover carrying bag, He said everything is original except for the ram, and hard drive port which can just be removed. The ram I wan't to downgrade back to 128k. Anyone know where I could get ram chips for this?

The serial number indicates that its the "2916th Mac manufactured during the 27th week of 1984 in Fremont, California, USA."

It also comes with all the cords including the original apple branded power cord.

Pictures.

 

[MacTech68]

Very nice - I love how the CMS hard drive's case looks like a miniature IBM PC1

As for the RAM, ebay might be your best bet. You'll need at least 16 x 4164 DRAM Chips (150 nano seconds speed or faster - usually marked with a suffix of "-15" or "-12" ).

If you really want originals, you could pay a premium for MT4264 chips with the white Apple logo on them:

However, since the above pictured chips were always soldered, the pins may not insert well into some kinds of sockets without some preparation of the pins.

 

[pl1984]

Nice find, especially for the price. I'd love to find something like that for $300.

 

[zastin17]

Nice find, especially for the price. I'd love to find something like that for $300.

Best part is I don't see a single scratch or blemish of any kind anywhere in the pictures. And it has barely yellowed.

 

[zastin17]

Very nice - I love how the CMS hard drive's case looks like a miniature IBM PC1

As for the RAM, ebay might be your best bet. You'll need at least 16 x 4164 DRAM Chips (150 nano seconds speed or faster - usually marked with a suffix of "-15" or "-12" ).

If you really want originals, you could pay a premium for MT4264 chips with the white Apple logo on them:

View attachment 738159

However, since the above pictured chips were always soldered, the pins may not insert well into some kinds of sockets without some preparation of the pins.

Still waiting to receive this. I was looking at the pictures and something is worrying me. He did say that its the original drive but when I look at the front it looks like the 800k drive metal lip right under the blue floppy disk. As well as the floppy he has open saying its 735k in disk. Am I crazy or am I right?

 

[MacTech68]

Still waiting to receive this. I was looking at the pictures and something is worrying me. He did say that its the original drive but when I look at the front it looks like the 800k drive metal lip right under the blue floppy disk. As well as the floppy he has open saying its 735k in disk. Am I crazy or am I right?

Nicely spotted.

Your correct. If this is a current photo, it has been upgraded to an 800K floppy drive.

You'll be hard pressed to find one that isn't - 400k was pretty un-usable back in the day. "Floppy Swapping" wasn't a popular pastime.

For $300 this is still a GREAT buy. Seriously.

 

[zastin17]

Nicely spotted.

Your correct. If this is a current photo, it has been upgraded to an 800K floppy drive.

You'll be hard pressed to find one that isn't - 400k was pretty un-usable back in the day. "Floppy Swapping" wasn't a popular pastime.

For $300 this is still a GREAT buy. Seriously.

Dammit. Oh well. I can always get a 400k drive from somewhere else. The only thing I hope is original is the floppy sled. Did the 800k fit onto the original sled? If it was upgraded he most likely did it himself. If so, I could just get one from a external drive or broken 512k. Or if anyone here has one they would be willing to sell to me. That would work too.

 

[MacTech68]

As you seem to have already worked out, the mounting sleds are different.

I can't tell you how many of those I threw away many years ago - too many it seems (considering what people are asking for them).

 

[zastin17]

I got it. I am overly pleased to say the least. Everything is in mint/brandnew condition. Everything. Zero corrosion anywhere and besides the slight yellowing, its basically brand new. The mouse and keyboard, software, and the entire macintosh and carying bag are mint. The software is still sealed and also looks brand new. The motherboard is the old one with the purple ceramic CPU. The CRT is also one I have not seen yet and has a slightly more yellow tint to the picture. There is no burn in and the screen is very bright, Brighter than my 512ke. The picture is slightly warped and rotated and IDK how to fix this. It also has a Macsnap 2mb upgrade board which is awesome as I can just pop it into any 512k board and upgrade the ram without soldering. The old ram was upgraded on the board from 128k to 512k as removing the macsnap results in 512k of reported ram. The floppy drive is also the 800k drive which I want to replace with the original 400k drive and sled. If anyone has one to sell. Please email me at zastin17@gmail.com. I have not been able to get the hard drive to work but I have no idea how to use it in the first place so I will look into that. The clock battery believe it or not still has a charge.



One thing I thought was odd was the dark amber colored flyback suction cup which is usually black, I think. However its definitely original as all the components used on the anolog board are from the time period and non of which have been replaced. The CRT seems to be different then anything else on the newer macintoshes and is Made by Samsung. The scsi board has the rom chips which are marked "apple 84-86" which are upgraded to obviously make the 800k drive work.



Also what is the little board soldered near the ram?

Anything else I should check? serial numbers ect?



The crazy part is the seller lost over $100 in shipping. I paid $100 for shipping and it cost over $200 to ship. Se he only made a little over $100 in profit which I kind of feel bad as he did not know how to use ebay properly.

 

[MacTech68]

Quite an impressive buy for $300.

Considering you now have a MacSnap and SCSI upgrade card and the overall condition - and what appears to be a QMS extrnal HD.

The small circuit board provides the extra RAM address for the 256k memory ICs. The row of pins it solders into is the "hidden port" the development team put in - supposedly without Steve Job's blessing.

The Analog board is nowhere near an original BUT you should be pleased that it's had components upgraded for reliability, especially the large white cylinder on the top edge. Better this way or it WILL fail.

The 'suction cup' is pretty original, though the transformer isn't the original type. Again, this is a better, more reliable part very quickly changed by Apple.

Those upgraded parts on the Analog board are the way Apple did them after several revisions for reliability. An original 1984 Analog board probably wouldn't be working anymore - they were THAT bad.

Depending on how the screen is distorted will depend on which adjustments need to be performed.

There will be a 342-xxxx-x part number on each ROM - best way to identify which they are.

 

[zastin17]

Wait. Your response confused me. Is the anolog board the original 128k model that came with this computer? Other than the suction cup all the components match other 128k stock anoloq boards in terms of using the same exact components on hand.

 

[MacTech68]

Let me explain it this way. The original Analog board looked pretty much the same, and the circuit design of the Analog Board didn't change radically until the MacSE.

What did change was the manufacturer of the flyback transformer - early type were smaller with a black 'suction cup', though the board was designed to take both the small diameter and the larger diameter that was later used. Later flybacks finally included an integral bleed resistor to discharge the tube when switched off.

There was an EMI/RFI metal bracket at the top of the board which was very quickly removed in production. Analog boards with this fitted are very rare indeed. An example can be seen in this shot of a prototype Mac128K which still had a Twiggy drive fitted:

Whilst components did vary, depending on what was on-hand at the time, the individual components still used the ratings prescribed by the original circuit design and Bill Of Materials.

Over the years, some of these components proved to be unreliable within the circuit, and those components were changed for higher rated equivalents, or components better suited to things like ripple or repetitive pulses. Such as the capacitor C1 (on a 120v board).

The board's design and circuit hardly changed at all, except for a change to silk screening and one change I'm aware of that added a resistor to the base of a small transistor (early boards with this revision have the resistor 'glued' to the transistor, like this:

Does that make more sense ?

 

[zastin17]

Alright good to know. Ile keep and eye out for an old anolog board. I removed the board that enabled the extra RAM address for the 512k of ram and its now back to 128k!! As far as I can tell everything is original except for the floppy drive ram and anolog board. I fixed the screen tilt and distortion by rotating the crt defleciton coil and turning the fine tuning magnets until it was nice and square.


Again if anyone has any of the items below they would be willing to sell. Respond!!

"128k anolog board" broken and or repairable.

400k floppy drive and sled working or repairable.

 

[zastin17]

After removing that board the 256k memory becomes very unstable display sad mac errors all the time with a corrupted beep sound. Leaving it unplugged for a while to discharge fixes it for a few minutes. It does report 128k of ram but I probably just need to replace the ram with stock 68k ram ic's to get it stable again.


Video----> https://www.dropbox.com/s/db9lxebamryvk37/DSC_0001.MOV?dl=0

 

[MacTech68]

After removing all the extra boards (MacSnap & SCSI), you should let it run for 20 minutes then check the voltages and adjust accordingly.

This document will assist in adjusting voltages: http://www.ccadams.org/se/classicmac2.pdf

Also after removing that small board, two of the pads need to be joined together:

 

[95yjman]

Nice find man!

 

[zastin17]

I ordered a busted stock 128k for parts. It has ram issues. And the same motherboard as this one. I may just take the motherboard from the broken one. Replace the bad ram and use that. Less to desolder! It has the original anolog board, Original A- roms and floppy drive which is what I wanted. Now I will have a perfect condition factory stock 128k!!! YEAA> Now I need to stop spending money and get a life. LOL, Anyway

The ram error displayed is 04014A if anyone knows what that means. It has the original ram and I rather keep as many of the original chips as possible. Is there anyway to identify which chip/s are bad?

 

[MacTech68]

Well, according to the charts, that error would denote a bad IC at board locations F11 AND G5. Never seen two reported at the same time.

Have a look all around the RAM ICS and surrounding area for signs of corrosion or bad scratches on both sides of the board.

For clarity, here are the locations - are these the original ICs or have they been swapped or socketed ?

 

[zastin17]

Well, according to the charts, that error would denote a bad IC at board locations F11 AND G5. Never seen two reported at the same time.

Have a look all around the RAM ICS and surrounding area for signs of corrosion or bad scratches on both sides of the board.

For clarity, here are the locations - are these the original ICs or have they been swapped or socketed ?

View attachment 741657

The board is completely factory stock. No corosion from leaking batteries as the anolog board contact pads are clean. The board has all the original ram. However one of the ram chips looks a little darker than the others. So that may be the bad chip. But I am not sure as I don't have it yet. Here is a pic of the board from the ebay post.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/st8AAOSwKQ9aLTNW/s-l1600.jpg

 

[zastin17]

So I got my parts. The 400k drive was completely seized up which is to be expected. But there is a problem. After lubricating the drive, it was making a continuous clicking noise. I found out that it was the limit switch that homes with head. It was to far away for the little notch to block the light. I loosend the screw holding the switch in place and moved it back a little. The drive homed properly. The drive reads and writes perfectly, But only its own disks. It will not read any disks from any other known working drive. I have multiple 400k formatted disks from my 800k drive. Not of them read, They just eject. I think that optical switch position was important as I don't think the head homes to the correct position to read the tracks. I got it to almost read one of my disks by messing with the switches position for a few hours, It almost fully booted but something was thrown off before it could finish. I connected the 400k drive to my 512ke with the scsi hard drive attached and formatted and transferred some software to its own disk. This disk reads perfectly and boots every time.

The head looks brand new and I cleaned it with a q-tip and alcohol. IDK how to repair this. Its probably something really stupidly simple.

 

[MacTech68]

Finding the actual track zero position is not going to be easy.

The tracks are spaced at 0.0074 inches (or 0.18796mm)

This kind of work is usually done with specific equipment and an alignment disk.

All I can suggest is to get a known (correctly written) bootable 400k floppy. Pop it into the drive and turn on the machine. You'll need to have the reset button handy (rear or left bottom of the mac - inside the bottom vent holes). Push that when the disk fails to read and move the sensor by a hair's whisker and push the reset button... rinse... repeat...

Having the sensor's fixing screw near tight and nudging the board with a flat-bladed screw driver but using a twisting action between the circuit board of the sensor and the cast chassis works best.

Note that whilst the mac is trying to find track zero, you can use this nudging/twisting tool until you see the head move forward (towards the center hub). Then carefully tighten the screw.

 

[zastin17]

Ok. Thank you for the advice. Almost there!!! My dumb a$$ just broke of the piece that goes between the sensor off. I super glued it back on, LOL it works still. Also a small O ring fell out somewhere after I removed the eject mechinism. Would you happen to know where it goes? Long shot but I might as well ask. It looks like a really really thin silver bushing. Cameras battery is shot, So I can't take pictures right now.

 

[MacTech68]

Ok. Thank you for the advice. Almost there!!! My dumb a$$ just broke of the piece that goes between the sensor off. I super glued it back on, LOL it works still. Also a small O ring fell out somewhere after I removed the eject mechinism. Would you happen to know where it goes? Long shot but I might as well ask. It looks like a really really thin silver bushing. Cameras battery is shot, So I can't take pictures right now.

If I'm thinking it through right, it slips over the shaft arowed below, before the you place the long flat arm, washer and e-clip over it.

Also, here is where to put your flat bladed screw driver to adjust the track zero position, pivoting on the v shape notch in the cast chassis.

 

[zastin17]

If I'm thinking it through right, it slips over the shaft arowed below, before the you place the long flat arm, washer and e-clip over it.

View attachment 742991


Also, here is where to put your flat bladed screw driver to adjust the track zero position, pivoting on the v shape notch in the cast chassis.

View attachment 742992

Thank you to everyone who helped me with this restoration project of my Macintosh 128k Especially MacTech68. I got the 400k calibrated after 30 minutes of power cycling and moving the sensor with a Flathead in the notch on the drive as MacTech68 mentioned. I tightened the screw and added nail polish to it, and the drive works perfectly every time. Every disk I throw in it works perfectly and reads in all my 800k drives. I consider this restoring a perfect success and I thank everyone who has helped. Also that little metal bushing that fell out of the drive was also put back in the correct place as MacTech68 knew where it went. Anyway here are the pictures of it all restored!! beautiful machine!!

 

[MacTech68]

Very nice 'unboxing'.

Glad to see it all worked out, especially the drive.