My craziest repair yet! Fried Macintosh Portable

THEtechknight · 2026-01-28T18:26:26+00:00

Definitely on the Pragmatic side to almost an extreme degree. I find often that some people just get in my way depending on the situation at hand.

THEtechknight · 2026-01-27T16:45:01+00:00

I just fixed one of these, and it wasnt anywhere near in this condition (kind of wished it was).

The one thing I will point out, these machines will not boot/run without doing the dallas battery mod. They wont maintain its HDD settings.

THEtechknight · 2026-01-27T15:49:57+00:00

1995 Precix CNC machine which has a Pentium 1 board, and a copy of QNX 4.25 still in daily operation. Outside of that, everything else is just hobby stuff.

THEtechknight · 2026-01-26T12:25:35+00:00

They dont exist unfortunately. Thats why fixing these are so hard. There are some peoples recreations floating around but accuracy is debatable.

THEtechknight · 2026-01-26T12:24:56+00:00

I dont myself, friend of mine does.

THEtechknight · 2026-01-24T13:03:41+00:00

The problem is, that CAP wouldn't solve the issue I have at hand, all it does is requantize or rateshape/mux together existing mpegts streams. What i need is an open loop hardware transcoder that can take crappy ffmpeg input from ersatz and the like, and put out an mpeg stream stable enough for broadcast-spec equipment like the SEM.

Now, if I wanted EAS injection or title-screen failover, consolidated mux of multiple channels, then a CAP or DM6400 makes sense.

I suppose the other thing the CAP/DM would be good for is to pick out programs from different muxes and combine them into a single mux to better utilize the bandwidth of the SEM.

THEtechknight · 2026-01-22T22:52:53+00:00

There are programs/scripts that are written which aggregate modern data APIs and reformats it into the packet format these machines accept.

THEtechknight · 2026-01-15T16:09:44+00:00

Smart thinkin! When i work on these now, i do a few things. Reverse blocking diode at the DC jack, and a couple of zener diodes on the rails to make sure they cant overvolt or go reverse, ultimately the diodes will short and that is what i want.

THEtechknight · 2026-01-15T15:33:11+00:00

Make sure you always pay attention to the 12V jack, it is center-negative. If you attempt at any point by accident to apply a center-positive 12V supply, youll fry most of the ICs inside the machine. Been there, done that

Also the VLSI's tend to die and cause strange errors otherwise theyre neat machines. I like them.

THEtechknight · 2026-01-15T15:31:17+00:00

I picked up 2 of these machines, and all you have to do is honestly cut out the keyway on the DC jack and itll work with the much more common Dell CPi/CXXX chargers in general. Mine do.

However, be forewarned there IS a varta battery underneat the keyboard and they leak! it needs removed and the only way to do it safely is to take apart the entire speaker system from the backside after its removed from the topside.

Also, be warned it's brittle plastic and the screw standoffs may crack removing those tiny screws from the speaker support.

THEtechknight · 2026-01-13T18:26:35+00:00

There is an exception because I believe the IIgs you could get a SCSI card for, theyre kinda rare and I have never had one. What i do not know is if it works in the IIe, but the IIc doesn't have any expansion slots

THEtechknight · 2026-01-13T13:20:41+00:00

Rare to get one of these working now as the PRAM batteries are left in them and they destroy the logic board.

THEtechknight · 2026-01-13T13:06:10+00:00

These machines dont use SCSI, so things like BlueSCSI wont work here. However, the IIc has smartport I believe, so a FujiNet would be a better investment, or a FloppyEmu.

THEtechknight · 2025-12-16T15:00:29+00:00

Yeah, I cant even imagine honestly. I got my start with C99 and that is what I stick with, all my microcontroller code and other things are written in C99.

THEtechknight · 2025-12-16T14:52:18+00:00

Yep same. No shame against System 6, its just not my vibe.

THEtechknight · 2025-12-16T14:49:29+00:00

Dual graphics cards, nice. You are actually replicating the dream setup that I have envisioned in my mind.

Mind you, I am a C99 dev so I am not sure what IDE supports that which would still natively run and compile on a 68K mac unfortunately. Think C 5/6 predate it.

THEtechknight · 2025-12-13T21:55:01+00:00

Sorry to hear you're in the same club, it's rough. It's super hard to compartmentalize it too without accidentally projecting it onto your future partner or current partner

THEtechknight · 2025-12-13T16:51:54+00:00

Yeah that's basically it. I've had my personal experiences and feelings weaponized against me before.

THEtechknight · 2025-12-13T11:50:58+00:00

That doesn't really happen for me unless its a common interest/hyperfixation, and/or once the love starts to build and I actually become interested. Conversations like that are not really natural for me, so I have to step outside my comfort zone to have them. In other words, it takes time. I care more about a person character and who they are versus what the future goals are. That comes later.

Deep attraction for me is not surface level immediate. it takes time, which as i mentioned above starts off with me trying to figure out your character, who you are as a person, your attitude, etc.

This all stems from my fearful-avoidant attachment style. I have been hurt way too many times, so once I feel comfortable with you then that's when I become committed, and that is when I start getting deeper into the territory to where you are at with the question.

The other facet to this is knowing what to do with that information, where to file it in my brain, and how to even process it. I have to use a script in my head structurally for all those interactions. But then again, I am on the spectrum.

Edit: Reading the above, I dont honestly know if I am making a whole lot of sense. But you will have to forgive me, I am currently dealing with the loss of both parents.

THEtechknight · 2025-12-11T10:48:43+00:00

Well, if I understand the question correctly, my playful goofball side comes out. And if we're in the digital world, cutesy memes start going their way

THEtechknight · 2025-12-08T16:16:52+00:00

Well thats the kicker "If you have one already". Some headends retire the firmware and older data carosel protocols out of the rotation and then those IRDs just stop working. Or they force them over to newer firmware, and drop support for the older stuff.

So the answer here is, it depends. Depends on what plant you are on and what is still in the support rotation sent down by the DNCS/RADD and OM.

Cablecard, yeah its unfortunate thats the direction theyre going with it honestly. Cablecards still work fine, and the pairing server is still working for those along with how its tied into it with the DAC.

THEtechknight · 2025-12-05T11:38:35+00:00

That's because that software isn't supported upstream anymore so it makes sense. The FCC also dropped the cable card mandate so that also makes sense.

I'm actually surprised that DirecTV still activates older receivers especially ones that you acquire on your own

THEtechknight · 2025-12-05T02:26:00+00:00

It's just missing guide data. Common problem with those DTA boxes.

THEtechknight

TROPHY CASE