Apple Macintosh SE restoration

I've been lovingly restoring a Vintage Apple Macintosh SE for the past year, I got it as spares or repairs from a computer liquidizing company that sell old office computers. I also got the hard drive separate which was fault and still doesn't work very well. It came with OS 6 and no programs at all apart from Word and Paint.





A few weeks (maybe months) Later I managed to win a Macintosh LC bundle (screen, keyboard, mouse, microphone, computer) for £40. all I wanted was the hard drive which had OS 7 on it and worked without needing to be tampered with. also I wanted the Ram sticks and peripherals and the neat boxed microphone and apple adapters that I could use with my iPad! I sold the screen for £20 and the keyboard for £20 instantly making my money back. I stripped down the LC and added the 800k drive to my SE as well as the hard drive.

Moment of truth, I turned it on for the first time with its new hard drive and two 800k drives. it beeped, and the happy mac face popped up.  lots of new things happened on boot up and then suddenly the desktop loaded up. to my surprise there was a folder called games!






I clicked on the folder expecting some card games, I was right until I scrolled down a little bit and found Lode runner, Mac man, shuffle puck, missile, Risk, and a folder full of text based games like start trek adventures and other RPGs.

I clicked on macman and it loaded up perfectly, I was playing in seconds. Same with loadrunner!
I also had a sound playing program that played the star trek Theme!!!! how cool is that?!

My Mac has since become a useful tool and I play my games on it and use it to write new 800k disks.

I also managed to buy a copy of Zork I by infocom!


The SE is my favorite Apple machine and I have an Apple macbook pro...!

It inspired me to make my modded Macintosh and to also look into more apple products, I have read lots of blogs about them and also watched all the Steve Jobs interviews because of it. Although its a shame that everyone who seems to own the vintage Macs seems to be so pessimistic about getting them to work right or getting new programs on them from new machines. I'm sure someone could build an interface or establish a link between the two. I have seen mac SE's browsing the internet and I think there should be more information about how this can be done.

Clamshell macs

 CLAMSHELL HELL

My Girlfriend asked me about Apple clamshell Macs. I told her they were very good little machines and I'd like one in my collection.

She bought herself one on eBay to use as a netbook, as most of us know that's almost impossible, almost.


to her dissapointment the clamshell ran OS9 and had no idea what broadband was. I couldn't configure a connection and the Airport utility was obsolete. it was a WEP passphrase not a WPA2 which isn't going to get me anywhere.

After a bit of digging around online I read that the clamshell Mac could use Lubuntu, a linux based freeware operating system made by Ubuntu. I burned a boot disk and popped it in the disk drive but it didnt work. the clamshell had about 32 mb of ram or something, not enough to run Lubuntu.

While waiting for her power supply to come I thought I had burnt the power board out using a different adapter. so to cover my trail I bought a second mac for spare parts (much cheaper). it arrived and inside it, it had a 512 MB ram stick. So I pulled that out and the boot disk now worked.



 This mac had OSX and OS9 installed, I won't be removing this as I like to keep some things original.














Once I had Lubuntu installed the Linux operating system recognized a generic USB dongle for a Raspberry PI I had and it connect to the Internet no problem. The new OS looked great to my Girlfriend though it broke my heart to loose the quirky apple logos and mac face on boot up. thought the tone still sounds on power up which is great. I bought her a new battery one ebay for £40 and now it works like a modern laptop. though Lubuntu has problems with Adobe Flash and wont run Youtube. I have seen videos of Lubuntu clamshells running YouTube but it looked like it would be way too laggy for her to enjoy anything. This doesn't bother her though as she can listen to her CD's, write her CV's and send emails and browse facebook.

The spare clamshell wont run a lubuntu bootdisk as the drive is an older CD drive. I would have to make a bootdisk on CD somehow but I thought I'd keep it original as I don't need to use it like she uses her laptop. I did however make it see through and remove the crappy airport card and internal DSL modem.


I wouldn't recommend this project to anyone who doesn't understand Hardware and Software that well. it was very difficult to do for me and I had to read hundreds of blogs, watches tons of videos and tinker for hours to get it to work. it cost about £150 probably all together. I bought my Girlfriend the power adapter and the battery and she bought the mac and the Ram (from mine). My own mac took along time to modify into being see through, I have no images of that mod but its pretty simple in a difficult way. you must have a see through mac all ready (one you can see the aluminum shell through the top and bottom) and remove and plating so you get this see through look. I still need to remove the layer on the bottom but its not really needed as you never see that part. This mac needs a new battery and some TLC. but once it done it will be a good Laptop to play a bit of music on. maybe some Beatles and Bob Dylan as Steve Jobs would of had it.

Images of the mod in progress

Apple Macintosh Pro - Apple Mac Mini modification.

What I did


I started this project July 2013 and it took about a month to finish. The main part was collecting parts to make it. It started with winning a Macintosh Classic on eBay that was broken for £45. I also won an Apple mac mini for £110. I had already thought about combining the two so I bought a cheap LCD monitor from China that measures 8 inches. I had to wait for all the parts to arrive, The Classic was the first to arrive followed by the Mac mini and some parts such as LED Fans and cables.
(Left image is the classic next to my restored SE)


The longest wait was for the TV to arrive, in the mean time I painted the case black to match the Pro peripherals. I know I may of spoiled the vintage charm but the case was scratched, stained horribly with rust and had numerous scuffs and dents. I sanded down the rough parts and rubbed off the rust and dirt which left it looking a bit oddly colored so I primed it and painted it black. I thought white would be a bad idea and I already had a black keyboard and mouse. I swapped the Apple logo onto my restored SE as it was in mint condition and took the tatty one from the SE which was faded and scratched from being in a school and badly mistreated and painted it white to keep with the old/new theme. The reason for this will made clear soon though I will say now I did this to go with the color scheme.

shortly after doing this I got the screen. So I mounted it right away to see how it looked. it looked really good. I mounted it on the back of the Classic's faceplate with four original motherboard screws and 8 washers. I used a small washer and a larger washer, this hugged the screen onto the faceplate. I have seen mods where it as been glued or taped on. I didn't like this idea as I am a perfectionist. I cut the from floppy disk groove a little more so a disk could fit through it as I plan to attach an external slim slot in disk drive. I was going to use the Mac mini's disk drive and mount it on the faceplate but I don't want to make anything too permanent, I want to be able to take the mac mini out if I ever have to. I don't have the material to make a frame inside so I stood it inside near the vent holes so it could keep ventilated. once I had it all together I gave it a test run.

 

 My Macintosh Pro test.

After I tested it and was happy with how it was going to go together I took it apart again even though I just wanted to use it as much as possible. I bought more paint and sanded (wet/dry) the faceplate where some marks had appeared. I wanted to make sure the new groove was smooth and looked like it belonged. I gave it a stronger coat of paint and also added a clear coat to protect it. While painting it I decided to make a stencil of Steve Jobs for the rear and paint the peripheral area white. and then added a white stripe to the front to keep in with the color pattern.

 My stencil.

 

I added two case fans to the vent at the back and the vent under the handle slot and makes the whole thing glow blue though the vent holes when its dark, it looks really great and also keeps the whole thing cool. to power it on I added a 4 point power extension, this allowed me to plug in the TV, the Mac mini and a USB power adapter. This allowed me to run the fans from the power rather than the USB of the computer, and also a powered USB hub.  I plan to wire this up to the original rear power kettle lead plug and power switch. I cut the switch out of the apple mac mini and extended the wire by soldering extra wire in and gluing it into one of the circular holes. I will add some USB points into the old SCSI ports.

Once I had it all back together I got the internet working on it through a USB Wifi adapter. I added some music and set it up on my desk and played around with it. I'm very attached to it and will have it set up as my secondary Computer, maybe for playing music. I use a mac book pro for most of what I do.



I will add some system information and some other specs and resource links

Things I'd change for a MK2.

Better screen - Listed as having a VGA port but didn't have a VGA port though oddly it came with a cable for one and was pictured with one. China huh? also its very hard to read small text.

Better Mac mini I would like a newer mac mini inside it so I can upgrade it to 2gb of ram. the mini I use now is limited to 1 gb

Original colour - I would need a better condition shell for this. maybe an SE which would be easier.


Things still to finish.

Add a DVD drive

Tidy the cables inside and tie everything up. At the moment I am still taking things out and re arranging the insides I need the above before sorting this out.

better interior speakers - the speakers inside the TV are way too small.

I need to fix a third fan inside and add some more blue case lights for my own taste.

 Think different