gjohn@Neon.Stanford.EDU (George H. John) (02/12/91)
I'd like to know if any netters have followed the power supply
upgrade procedures outlined in Larry Pinarry Pina's excellent book,
"Macintosh Repair and Upgrade Secrets." I'd be interested in the cost
of the upgrade (whether you did the SE upgrade or the heavy-duty
upgrade and if there were any problems not mentioned in the book.
My old 512k is getting pretty old and frail. I've had to resolder
J1 (it looked burned), so I think some component replacement is in order.
(My emacs seems possessed, apologies if this comes out garbled)
Thanks, and I'd also be very interested to hear from anyone who has
discovered other books of a technical nature regarding the mac.
Basically , I'd be interested in any book that mentions using a
soldering iron on a mac -- that type of thing.
~---George John---gjohn@{cs|neon}.stanford.edu-------4154973854rgonzal@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Ralph Gonzalez) (02/15/91)
I upgraded the power supply on my Mac Plus after the second time that it blew. I then sold it but since I haven't heard anything from the buyer I assume the upgrade has held out (it's only been 6 months, though). I ordered the upgrade kit from one of the places listed in Pina's references section. As I recall, it was the only place he said carried a full upgrade kit. It cost about $50 including flyback transformer and several capacitors, transistors, etc. It took me about 2 hours to replace all the old parts with the upgrade parts. Since all the work took place on the analog board there's not much danger of ruining things with amateur level soldering experience. I think its worthwhile since installing the upgrade was all it took to fix my power supply the second time it went out, saving me the $200-$250 cost to get it serviced. Assuming it also prevents future power supply problems that's even better. Another upgrade which I didn't install was adding a fan. Another thing Pina's book helped me do was to adjust the monitor since (as is normally the case) the image had shrunk about 10% over the 3 years since I bought the Mac Plus. Pina tells you how to enlarge the image to take up nearly all the available screen space, plus how to focus the monitor, adjust the voltage level, etc. It includes a disk containing a program which puts up test patterns on your screen to help make these adjustments and bring your Mac back to "like-new" status. Good luck! -Ralph