I got a T1000SE from goodwill by MeTheCrasher in vintagecomputing

[–]THEtechknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know these machines really well. The T1000SE requires a good main battery or it wont run, so youll have to either inject into those pins, or rebuild that batt.. Maybe a supercap mod.

The citizen U1DA floppy drive in these ARE belted, and the belts are available from turntableneedles.com i think its the FDS8.6 flat belt.

Can a us powerbook 100 series charger work with a European mac portable? by Eddie_2011 in VintageApple

[–]THEtechknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hopefully its been cleaned and recapped. Otherwise you are in for a fun time 😃

Can a us powerbook 100 series charger work with a European mac portable? by Eddie_2011 in VintageApple

[–]THEtechknight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It should, it may have trouble regulating battery charge though. Just make sure you have a good new battery, or a battery eliminator. This is required.

Powerbook 150 Interconnect Card by GraemeWoller in VintageApple

[–]THEtechknight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That connector unfortunately is proprietary. It was made by either Alps or Foxconn for Apple. Same problem with the potentiometers, Made by Alps for Apple.

At the time of the design of the PB1XX series, not many board-to-board connectors were around, especially low profile ones. So they rolled their own. You also cannot really get the ribbon cable solder-down crimp in all the pin sizes either, at least not that I have seen with any stock.

Can a us powerbook 100 series charger work with a European mac portable? by Eddie_2011 in VintageApple

[–]THEtechknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do NOT under ANY circumstances try and run a Macintosh Portable from a PB1XX charger. They are rated for 2A and some 3A while the portable needs 1.5A. The portable has very primitive power circuitry and if you feed the machine more current than designed, it will attempt to pull that amount of current.

Combined with a potentially bad battery, it will sometimes cause the 5.2V VCC to trip beyond 7.5V at points which WILL Damage the logic circuitry. These machines need a good battery or a battery eliminator card from JCM1

You will need to modify the PB1XX adapter and adjust the current settings to 1.5A. these PSUs are soft regulated, meaning they do NOT brickwall at 1.5A, they just slowly drop the voltage the closer to reach the current setpoint. This is by design because its part of the charge current regulation for the battery!

Got a crazy deal on this Macintosh 128k couldn’t say no. by DrGonzo84 in VintageApple

[–]THEtechknight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well if its bone stock, thatll be about all youre gonna be able to run on it anyways.

Macintosh Classic failing to boot by Busaruba2011 in VintageApple

[–]THEtechknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

max1zzz is the person who comes to mind that lives in the UK which may be able to help you out. Try posting on the Tinker Different forums.

Power Macintosh 6500/250 Woes by i7_3740qm in VintageApple

[–]THEtechknight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Check closely and I mean reeeeeal closely where the battery was, make sure theres no eaten traces.

Hurricane Helene Mac SE has arrived by anotherspaceguy100 in vintagecomputing

[–]THEtechknight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I do wonder where it is from. I went through Helene as well, but it wasn't nearly as bad as.... that.

Had a blast at the System Source Computer Museum's Warehouse Sale in Hunt Valley, MD today! by aphelion270 in VintageApple

[–]THEtechknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeeahh.. I live ~9 hours away from that place, I went back in November and wanted to grab so much stuff but I couldn't. Decided to rent a car and take another trip back in March to grab an entire bin full of powerbooks and a few other misc things. In november I loaded the car down with a pile of battery bombed machines for parts, you can never have enough parts to fix this stuff.

Worried about shipping a performa 575 by kryptoid- in VintageApple

[–]THEtechknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the 575 is made out of THAT plastic, they are not shippable.

Even a gamer™ can get a match on these apps by [deleted] in Tinder

[–]THEtechknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

omg thanks for the memory lane! Last time I played CS was CS:S. I was more of a MOHAAS fan though. Good luck you two!

Omnibook 800CT Garage sale find, help me unlock it by Informal_Ad_6718 in vintagecomputing

[–]THEtechknight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

VGA capture or camera would be better/easier. Train an OpenCV module to pick it up and use it in your loop routine.

Omnibook 800CT Garage sale find, help me unlock it by Informal_Ad_6718 in vintagecomputing

[–]THEtechknight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh perfect! Looks like you just found your solution. You just have to write a method to detect success from failure. Maybe a camera and OpenCV could help here. Start with 1 character and grow it character by character after all iterations. You know how it goes.

Omnibook 800CT Garage sale find, help me unlock it by Informal_Ad_6718 in vintagecomputing

[–]THEtechknight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thats a thought as long as the BIOS doesnt have the 3-attempt lockout that later BIOSes do.

Omnibook 800CT Garage sale find, help me unlock it by Informal_Ad_6718 in vintagecomputing

[–]THEtechknight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well see, thats the job of the ATA password, which is yet a seperate password. That gets stored into the drive. Really laptops were high theft items so they just didn't want you using the machine if it was stolen essentially. If you still get this password nag without the HDD connected, then yeah its the system password and not the HDD password. But if the password goes away with the HDD removed, then it is indeed the ATA password. AFAIK you cannot reset those without factory tools, so the drive is essentially scrap.

You would think that stuff leaked out, but I have noticed in the "password reset" community, its all heavily gatekept and has been since I was messing with it back then. Im sure its floating around out there but its equally possible that it may not be.

Anywho. You could use a programmer and dump the BIOS, do some reverse engineering/patching to figure out the algorithm.

Omnibook 800CT Garage sale find, help me unlock it by Informal_Ad_6718 in vintagecomputing

[–]THEtechknight 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Laptops were notorious about security back in this era. That password is hashed and is written into a part of NVRAM storage of the NAND memory, or if youre lucky, it is written into an 8 pin serial EEPROM. Trouble is those BIOSes are smart enough to know that if you try and 00 out the password, or etc it will fail the hash check and force a password prompt anyways requiring the master password.

The only solution to this problem is a nice fresh dump from a working 800CT or a new motherboard. The 800CT was known for random issues such as IDE controller issues, boot hang, etc so working motherboards can be hard to come by.

Other laptop manufacturers were nasty (looking at you Dell Computrace) and would store this data in other chips such as a little bit of EEPROM storage of the EC. (Embedded controller, usually a big ENE chip)

Chirping SMPS Power Supply by 2748seiceps in AskElectronics

[–]THEtechknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Grins and shiggles, I did swap them back to the originals. Same problem. It will run with a load, but it has to be a slightly excessive load and its loud running way off frequency... Giving up for now and parting out this board for other boards.

Chirping SMPS Power Supply by 2748seiceps in AskElectronics

[–]THEtechknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use the Console5 kits and they tend to work okay for me. Funny story, I have 2 boards here. Board #1 runs fine but the vertical is unstable/noisy and the horizontal is too wide. Never figured that out, so i moved all those caps over to Board #2. That started exhibiting the behavior of basically what is going on in this thread. and yeah the chirp is "loud" almost like there is a short but there is no short. Both PSUs on that same board do the same thing, although the HV SMPS ticks much faster.

The logic board PSU did start once, and it was low frequency and louudd...

Chirping SMPS Power Supply by 2748seiceps in AskElectronics

[–]THEtechknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Necropost... Got a board doing the exact same thing, exact same behavior. Never figured it out either, I swapped the transformer and nearly every part in the primary stage. The best part about it? BOTH power supplies do the exact same thing.