I am waiting for my brand new IIfx and laserwriter to show up.
While I am waiting what should I do before pluging everthing in? The first thing I am thinking is to remove the battery and make sure there is no leakage.
What else should I do? I dont know how big the scsi drive is or what Mac system software is in the box or how much memory. I will report back once I know.
I would just like to be able to hit the road running once everything shows up.
Here is what I have comming:
Brande new IIfx
2 Brand new laserwriters (hoping for IINTX)
Brand new Video Card
Brand new Apple RGB monitor
Any help getting me up and running will be greatly apprecited!
THANKS!
Bill
I hope I'm wrong, but it sounds like you bought a pig in a poke.
Collectors sometimes trade stories of machines that have sat for 30 years in warehouses as "dead stock", new and unopened, but these instances are extremely rare, especially if a full office setup with a display and printer are involved. Now you have to somehow believe that the same seller has wandered into a back stock room where three different, and somehow perfectly matching, components in unopened boxes have sat for 30 years. Not impossible, but so unlikely that I am skeptical.
Unfortunately even if the "brand new" machine is real, it is unlikely to still be in working condition. There were two major manufacturing defects in the IIfx that have greatly reduced their numbers since 1990.
The Mac IIfx contains two batteries, to the right rear of the main board near the RAM slots. They are 3.6V, lithium thionyl chloride (Li SOCl2) cells. This type of cell has amazing durability and charge retention—if it doesn't corrode or explode. Sadly the supplier for most cells used by Apple in the 1990s was Mitsubishi Maxell, whose batteries of this type are notorious for leaking and destroying computers. Most IIfx boards have been ruined by these leaking cells.
Less severe but still a real problem are the capacitors that Apple used in these machines. They were one of the first machines with surface mount device (SMD) aluminum electrolytic capacitors, before the handling requirements of this technology were fully appreciated. From what I understand, the boards were probably cleaned after reflow with chlorinated solvents such as trichloroethane, which had a delayed effect of making the rubber seals in the capacitors disintegrate. Even after 10 years they had often begun to leak their electrolyte onto the board, causing corrosion and requiring repair. Any original SMD electrolytics should be removed and replaced with newer and less failure-prone components.
Default memory in a IIfx is 4 MB, enough to run most applications with System 6, but uncomfortably tight for Multifinder or System 7. The IIfx uses 64-pin SIMMs that are proprietary to only itself and the LaserWriter IINTX, both long discontinued, so finding RAM upgrades is very difficult.
Then there are the ordinary problems common to all old Macs, such as floppy drives seized with dried-out grease, noisy or dead hard drives, and power supplies that need to be recapped.
The short version is that even though the IIfx is the most desirable 68030 Mac, it is risky to buy one without a working demonstration or pictures of the logic board. It's not realistic to think you can time-travel 30 years to pick up Christmas presents.
Thanks for that!
I just have to hope and pray the batteries have not leaked.
Is there anyone is the US that can recap the board?
Please share photos when it arrives. Sounds like a time capsule, with both the excitement and the uncertainty!
you bet. I will share photos of this tresure trove of mac goodies! :)
Its for real. These were new in 1995 and were never used. The woman selling from the estate sale said her husband put them away and forgot all about them and she just found them.
So hopefully it will be great! The shipping weight is 200lbs!!!
Here is the first photo :)
DSCN2537.JPG
Wow! Keep sending the photos in stages, so we get to experience the anticipation.
I was going to offer you my Laserwriter IIg motherboard, complete with RAM, if you were local; but it looks like my question asking you what city you are in was deleted by the Moderator.
GOOD LUCK!
I' ll look into this and let you know what happened.
Colin says he didn't delete the post either. No other account with the necessary permissions has even logged in in the past two days. I did see both MichaelLAX's post and retro_bill's reply. retro_bill's reply was threaded, so an issue with MichaelLAX's post could have affected retro_bill's as well. I'm going to see if I can find something in the logs.
In the meantime, you're both welcome to continue the conversation. There's no problem with discussing location. And for the record, we don't delete posts like that, unless they're just outright spam. If there was an issue with a post, such as some sort of a privacy concern, the post would be edited, not deleted, and I there would be a note in italics at the bottom of the post explaining why I edited it.
robespierre just pointed out to me that the posts in question were actually made over in the Macintosh IIfx and LocalTalk printers, and are still there.
I am near Chicago, IL
I was not aware that there are two parallel threads. My apologies to the moderators.
What must I do to get an email notice that I thread I post in has a reply; as opposed to the generic emails I receive now about all new posts?
Too bad: Although I grew up in West Rodgers Park and Lincolnwood, I am now in Los Angeles.
There's a link titled "Subscribe" at the bottom of the first post.