[JackNet]

   
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.