I recently acquired a Macintosh Classic. I'm a collector of old computers, and was eager to add it to what I had already obtained. However, the rest of my Macs are in near perfect condition, and all run quite happily. This one was an exception. When I fired it up for the first time I was presented with a tell-tale checkerboard display with all sorts of scramblies in it. I knew something was horribly wrong.
I opened it up. Lo and behold! The PRAM battery had, at some point, 'sploded. The corrosion inside was horrendous. The plastic mount for the battery had rusted off completely and was bouncing around inside of it. The motherboard was obviously no good, and the metal casing around the affected area suffered greatly (protruding metal bits had actually broken off).
Now I've got a decision to make, and I'm having trouble with it. Here are two options I like, with arguments:
-Replace the board with one from a working Macintosh Classic II-
There's an eBay store that sells them for about $23 (with shipping included). It'd be nice to add this old relic to my collection, and I thought I might try to put NetBSD on it for kicks. Then again, given the unit's immense popularity in its time, there's little doubt that I'll come across another one eventually. Also, this one has some nasty rust, and I'd rather have one that's in better condition for my collection.
-Build a micro ATX system inside of the case, utilizing the existing monitor-
One of my odd hobbies is building new computer systems that look like very old ones. If I can find away to make the power supply get alone with both the ATX board and the power circuit board for the monitor, I could have a PC that looks like an 80s-born Mac. I'd install Linux or BSD on it and make it look like a classic Mac OS.
What do you think I should do? Reply and tell me. Also, if you have a better idea, I'd like to know it.
I got a working classic for free. it fired up first time I fired it up!! I turned it into a kitchen mac, as an extra clock, and to store recipies on under datachef. quite handy. now I am working on trying to get it on the net over an external 33.6k modem, to grab RSS feeds or some such bit, nothing too taxing. still, it's amazing what you can do with a 16 year old mac.
or, you could turn it into the ubiquitous macquarium. one guy even turned his into a litter box for his cat.
or, just do what everyone else is doing, and stick a mac mini in it, expand the floppy drive slot to make room for the optical drive, and wire up the b/w CRT to the DVI port. it can be done, and it is a nice retro/modern morph.
hope that gave you some ideas.
-digital
I'm not positive, but the Mac Classic may have the same hard B&W screen that the original Macintosh had (No greyscale!). This wouldn't look very good for a Mac Mini. Regardless, my budget is quite tight. As it is, my only hope would be a mini-itx for the PC project, and that has already been mastered and then-some with a Macintosh SE/30.
(eww... Windows)
I think I'm going to buy the cheap Macintosh Classic II board and give this rusty old computer an upgrade. I should be able to clean the rust nicely, and it'll be fun to try to get networking through SCSI working under netbsd.
I forgot the link to the SE/30 itx page:
http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/mac-itx/
Pretty neat.
Not gonna work, never ever. Look for a CRT 9" POS monitor or 9" not-widescreen LCD with a VGA connector. In order of cheap to not cheap, greyscale CRT ($10-20), colour CRT, colour LCD ($200+).
Then mount an entire Mac Mini in it
with a monitor (KVM type) switch to connect to a larger monitor when you need to. Or an ITX board with a dual head video card.
If you get a CRT watch out that it's not too long to fit into the case. An LCD would give you more room for a larger motherboard (Mac or PC), power supply, drives etc, not to mention cooling.
If you're comfortable working around very high voltages you could also convert the CRT into a Wobblevision
There's also lots of decorative, non-functional mods which just use the casing, and aren't fishtanks. Imagination is your friend here.
Have a look at these pages for inspiration, and the hacks entries off the homepage here.
http://www.stuartbell.dsl.pipex.com/PowerCC/
http://www.applefritter.com/node/7005
http://www.destruc.tv/minitosh.php
http://www.applefritter.com/node/7016 : note comments about a VGA mod here don't apply to the Classic
http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/itxtv/ : neat in that it uses an LCD monitor with a built-in TV tuner, and keeps the TV functionality
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/07/how_to_make_your_own_ipod_hifi.html
Hmm... I'd much rather have an original Macintosh. The Mac Classic is okay, but nothing I'd treasure, so I'm going to go ahead and make a wobblevision. It sounds awesome. It'll look cool housed in the Mac Classic case. Apparently somebody already did this with two Mac Classics, but that's not going to stop me.
Edit: Five minutes later: After the first time I posted this I went downstairs to my workshop to see how the Mac Classic would fair as a potential wobblevision. I can't tell if the CRT is turning on without the motherboard or not, but that isn't really an issue. It seems this machine is most definitely destined to be a wobblevision, now, as when I turned it one the harddrive started screeching and buzzing like a rotary saw.