Been Given a Color Classic - Printable Version
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Been Given a Color Classic - JackNet - 04-23-2025
During my time briefly and painstakingly fixing phones (never again, I just dont have the acuity for it) and iMacs/desktops at an Apple service center that winded down after 35 years, the old man gave me the color classic that was sitting up on the display shelf. There was also a Mac Plus and a Classic II, but I let him keep those knowing those are a chore to get working, let alone this color classic.
I have gotten it cleaned up as much as I can, being as delicate as I could. Only one of the clips for the "color classic" badge broke off as I kinda expected, not a biggie to get that back on somehow, could've been a lot worse. Unfortunately, the original board got crapped on by the clock battery over the years as expected and it was too destroyed for me to even attempt to save it, so I skipped to getting the computer through the mystic stuff.
An LC575 board was sourced from an ebay listing at a reasonable price, tested to be working with the capacitors replaced with the better solid ones by the seller, a blue scsi to load disk images from, and an ADB mouse+keyboard from the old guy's scraps. All that's left is the analog/VGA stuff. At first I wanted to take the pacifist route of doing the VGA mod by doing the splices on the backplane cable. This was only ever documented in the doping mac guide and this video only showed that page briefly before going with the ol "dremel out the traces" route.
Even if I did import the book from japan, be it from some auction or whatever, after piecing what was shown in the video it did seem contradicting so I stopped partway with it (one cut wire literally twisted and taped back together cus i didnt have soldering equipment at hand until now) and instead proceeded to cut the traces as instructed, and at that point that's where I stalled. I didnt have any wires at hand that i can salvage and kept forgetting to fetch some so thus the analog board stayed dormant outside of the machine. Hopefully the tube will be fine without the anode attached after a good while, though the case is screwed in so its not entirely exposed, cus if not i'll have to shove the analog board back inside as is until that gets worked on. I just overall have not been in a good emotional and now somewhat financial position as of late to bother putting the required effort.
That being said, high voltage electronics are not my strong suit, the analog board is very much sitting on the shelf in unknown condition and I don't want to smoke test it right away without any confidence, and i'm not aware of anyone who can take a swing at the analog board besides maybe techknight? That and then getting back to the backplane to solder that spliced cable back together now that it's committed my only viable documented option is to hacksaw traces...
For now, the color classic is sitting as a display piece once again in the boardroom of the family business until i find a way to get the analog board worked out. I'll also have to figure out how to best get it transported to the states somehow, or I guess it'll be fine staying where it's at. Just need someone to look at the board.
RE: Been Given a Color Classic - robespierre - 04-23-2025
The online activity around the Color Classic was mostly in the early 2000s, and most of the websites about it have disappeared since then, so you have to use archives.
The Color Classic forum on AppleFritter is still there, but with fewer posts this decade.
Dremels are not suitable tools for any electronic modification, except sheet metal cutting.
RE: Been Given a Color Classic - JackNet - 04-23-2025
(04-23-2025, 09:28 PM)robespierre Wrote: Dremels are not suitable tools for any electronic modification, except sheet metal cutting.
Truer words never spoken. Why such baleful methods being passed on still after 20 years is beyond me, haha.
RE: Been Given a Color Classic - vishnu - 04-24-2025
I do all my electronics prototyping wire wrapping on tenth of an inch centers, using wire wrap sockets from digikey.
RE: Been Given a Color Classic - JackNet - 05-23-2025
I'm gonna see if I can finally make some progress on the color classic for once. Once the tweak is done on the analog board, I'll need to look for someone who can further work on it. Not afraid to get it shipped, and I do have one other person in mind who might dare to comprehensively work on it.
(04-23-2025, 08:07 PM)JackNet Wrote: This was only ever documented in the doping mac guide and this video only showed that page briefly before going with the ol "dremel out the traces" route.
After staring at the sole screengrab on the video of the japanese book shown, which demonstrates that the VGA tweak is theoretically possible via the backplane cable itself, I couldn't make any electrical sense of it after verifying the pinout and where the splices are made (It's mirrored on the page, but still looked overwhelming regardless), so I'll just undo the progress I did to the backplane ribbon and go back to sacrificing the analog board per usual. Would've been a neat bonus to keep the analog board stock, but it's gonna take quite a while to check other resources right now to see if this procedure is somehow better laid out, so for the moment other than plausibly the book (and not without very thoroughly inspecting the work and pinout), the documented chop and bodge method is the only reliably documented way to tackle this tweak. 2000's was still a wild west era for advice anyway, so I'm not surprised any lick of sane methods materialized and it was just accepted as a given. I'd say this would be a worthwhile point of improvement for future mystics.
RE: Been Given a Color Classic - JackNet - 07-18-2025
(04-23-2025, 08:07 PM)JackNet Wrote: and i'm not aware of anyone who can take a swing at the analog board besides maybe techknight?
Welp, techknight has agreed in taking said swing and now the board is being worked on. Just relieved in having progress on this again to get it crossed off and working. Will update when complete.
RE: Been Given a Color Classic - JackNet - 08-08-2025
(07-18-2025, 04:12 AM)JackNet Wrote: Welp, techknight has agreed in taking said swing and now the board is being worked on. Just relieved in having progress on this again to get it crossed off and working. Will update when complete.
The analog board I sent pretty much developed cracked traces over time due to the corrosion; techknight was was able to get some life out of it briefly until it stops working when flexed slightly. Only option that was settled on was to completely recondition a donor board laying around and moving all the usable components over, along with new capacitors and replacements for anything not functional.
This was his most enduring color classic commission he worked on to date, and I'd like to thank him for taking the time out of his schedule in getting it done.
That said, I was cautioned to not bother with the VGA modding and to live with the 512x384 resolution. Just a matter of removing a jumper and adding a 4.7k ohm resistor to the logic board which I'm able to do, then wire up a new speaker and this thing is complete. I'll do another fly-over on the emulator to ensure the test suite is set for adjusting the pots for the tube and that I don't bump into any issues reagarding the screen resolution given the software I've gathered.