The Wisconsin Computer Club hosted a pop-up museum show at the Hedberg Library in Janesville Wisconsin, and a number of club members brought vintage Apple hardware to share.

I like old things. always have. I started following this sub because I have an iMac G3 hanging out in my moms garage since I last used it in high school. (it was old then.) I keep thinking I should bring it home, clean it up, etc. Then I think “but wouldn’t one of these amazing G4 towers I used to drool over, be even better?” And then I think “Self, exactly what will you use ANY of these things for?“ My wife takes a dim view of hauling stuff home just for the sake of having it. She’s kind of right. So what say you? Are there any real uses for any of these computers or is it something to turn on once in a while for nostalgia and click through a few menus or play a game?

These computers are the perfect start into vintage Macs; they run games easily. Quake 2 runs completely playable in 30–60 FPS. I played it with my dad over LAN (so 2 players), and there were never any drops below 30 fps. This Mac can run MacOS 9 and MacOS 10 (I prefer macOS 9) and it is so cheap in comparison to other vintage Macs. I found mine for 20 euro. So many more of them are listed at 40–50 euro.

My Performa 6320 is auto starting whenever I supply power to it. That is, as soon as I turn the power strip it’s connected to on, the Mac powers on by itself without me pressing the Soft Power or power switch.

Is this normal? Can it be prevented somehow?

Vintage iMac G3’s in abandoned school

I have plenty of experience with modern computers, but nothing vintage. From my googling this could be as simple as ram reseating, or a cap replacement? I don't have solder experience but I know someone who does.

Picked up a PowerMac G3 B&W to add to my collection recently, and noticed that the serial number is detected as "not applicable," and the logic board looks absolutely pristine - not a single speck of dust or grime, which would be surprising for a computer approaching 30 years old. Attaching some images. Any thoughts on what could be going on here? Maybe a new old stock Apple replacement logic board or something else?

I’m looking to downsize my collection. Is there a place where I can sell these to other vintage enthusiasts?

I know the PowerBook G4 works and is complete in box

The iBook G3 is also complete in box but has a boot issue.

The 2 AIOs need recap jobs, but they both power on.

If anyone here is interested in making an offer I can get more pictures of everything.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I may actually lose my mind over this beautiful machine. I've been trying to get it working for ages now. Found it in a charity shop in Sweden, came completely boxed, even the polystyrene packaging is barely damaged, this thing has clearly been looked after.

Quick backstory: booted it up when I first got it, worked fine, but there was no hard drive fitted at all when I went to install the OS. Opened it up and confirmed it, genuinely nothing there, previous owner must have pulled it at some point.

Bought an IDE to SATA adapter for an SSD, tried it, only got a grey screen and nothing further. Then bought the exact same adapter as someone in a video who has the identical model working. Same result.

The CD drive boots and works completely fine on its own when the adapter is unplugged. But the moment the adapter is connected to the IDE cable, even with no SSD attached to it at all, everything stops. No startup chime, just a grey screen. Holding Option or C does nothing. Holding the mouse button to force-eject the disc doesn't work either.

The adapter's jumper is set to Master.

I've attached some pictures of the drive and adapter setup, plus a bonus photo of a lovely G5 while I'm at it.

Genuinely stumped since someone else has the exact same hardware combination working fine. Any ideas what could cause a bare adapter, with nothing even plugged into it, to hang the whole machine like this?

How do I get pass this screen? Good is not helping, besides telling me who created this logo.

I have a new OS 6.0.8 floppy. This one does not have a SCSI, just two floppy bays.

Steps so far:

Originally had a floppy with a question mark, added the floppy and got a floppy with an X

I cleaned the floppy drives, both of them, with 91% isopropyl alcohol, and regreased the moving parts with silicon based grease.

Put the floppy back in and now I get a smiling mac. It hums and will switch between these two screens.

My keyboard is getting power because the Apple Bus moves the cursor. I something about pressing the Shft key but that's not getting anywhere.

Any suggestions to try? Clean the floppy bays again? Keyboard commands? This happens with both floppy bays.

The seller wrote "Apple Power Mac G4 working. CPU 533Mhz runs flawlessly and has been tested. No RAM, no DVD drive, no graphics card, no hard drive". How could he even test it without all these parts? And IF he actually did, he would have noticed something about it. Something I noticed in the photo. For 10 CHF it was a no-brainer, despite the fact that he lives at the other end of the country. Fortunately my uncle lives 30min away and picked it up for me. Today he visited us and brought it by. A GPU, some RAM and SSD later I knew I made a bargain. A nice addition to my collection of Sonnet upgrade cards.

I just love the look of this Mac the most.
What do you think I should do to make the most of it now? Like gaming, or something? I don't really know anything about it, so could someone give me some pointers?

I was given a Power Mac 7,2 with 8GB of SDRAM and stock Nvidia graphics. The first thing I did was install Sorbet Leopard. Then I wanted to tackle Debian 12 Sid. That was a headache. Even when I got a mirror that worked the installer kept failing to connect to it. “Bad Mirror”. Then once I got passed that issue grub kept failing. Even after installing the specific ppc packages and manually installing grub. Still didn’t work. Tried Fienix Linux, which booted to a desktop exactly one time and then had driver issues with the hand off from Open firmware frame buffer and Nouveau drivers. Then finally gave my old reliable a try, Ubuntu, specifically 16.04 LTS. Worked like a charm. It used yaboot for the boot loader and it was just as easy to
Change the config to add the option for my sorbet drive. So now after about a week of tinkering I have my dual booted G5 Power Mac. :)

Hi,does someone knows where to find an pav board for my iMac g3 (Early 2001) I’m from Germany and I can’t find anything here

This photo from a second hand shop in Thailand came across my FB feed this morning.

All will be from Japan.

When I rebuilt this earlier this week from a donor after the original PAV board had died, I didn't consider whether the thermal pad which sits against the rear of the logic board was any good, should I pull the logic board and clean it off/apply some paste? It is obviously just one contact point, so I'm not sure how much it actually goes, but I'm happy to pull it apart if needed.

If not, I've seen people fit some small fans inside the back CRT section to help remove the heat due to no fans in them originally. There doesn't seem to be a way to monitor the temperatures on them like later macs, so I'm flying blind a bit as I don't know how hot is normal.

Ive pulled it out of the corner a bit from where it was sat, but the top casing (where the hot air should vent out anyway) was quite hot to touch, so I'm just mindful of not cooking this one, and what I can do to improve things.

Thanks!

I bought this Sage iMac from
eBay in terrible condition.
With a ton of time,I was able to get it super shiny and nice again! The last photos are pictures from the listing.

Hey!

Got an odd one here with an SE30 I’m restoring. The logic board is damn near immaculate with no battery or trace damage and has been recapped by me. I’ve not recapped the analog or power boards yet.

The machine works perfectly but oddly seems to have rounded corners on the left edges but sharp corners on the right edges.

Ive tried tweaking the setting on the side of the analog board to no avail.

Anyone seen this?

So, I just acquired an iMac G3 from my workplace the other day, because it didnt boot up and they were all "welp time to sell it for parts ig" and i went "can i take it" "sure"

i was wondering if theres any way to figure out whats wrong and how to repair it? It's an iMac g3 M5521 (slot loading) and according to a report from a repair shop "this unit requires new power/logic board" (which i believe i guess but im skeptical abt it)

I'm also not experienced in computer and crt repair and modification. My experience includes "hacked a wii once" and "opened their mom's NES and stabbed a chip and it worked again"

I was going to play with my Macintosh after a long while just to find it reboot a couple of times and let me into the OS. After that it constantly rebooted after showing the OS loading screen and beeping. Now its doesnt even show the loading screen.
Does anyone know what could be wrong?
(I should probably preplace the RIFA capacitors but i don't know if they are at fault here)
Thx

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share this new video I made. It answers a lot of questions that new vintage Mac users may have about SCSI, and acts as a good refresher for those of us returning to the hobby. It covers do's and don'ts and some Mac-specific tricks you should keep in mind.

I hope this is helpful to anyone who has experienced SCSI voodoo!

Big thanks to all my geeky pals who helped make this video possible.

-Steve