I recently picked up an LC III



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Author	I recently picked up an LC III (Read 34452 times)
ShinobiKenobi 256 MB Posts: 362 System 7 fan	on: July 25, 2024, 18:44 I recently picked up an LC III and an Apple Color Plus 14" Display. The monitor won't turn on, sadly. But the LC III does. Unfortunately, sometimes it has the bad chime and shows a sad Mac with 0000000F 00000033. Other times it gets to the screen with the mouse and a question mark floppy disk. I made some floppies with the LC III System 7 image from Mac Garden, but they don't boot up, either. For a second or two, it'll show the compact Mac and then revert to the flashing question mark. It always ejects the floppies at this screen. Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #1 on: July 26, 2024, 11:00 Congrats on picking up the LC III! These are nice 68k System 7 Macs. They also don't take much space and are easy to service. Had one in the past and loved it :-) That said, it sounds like your floppy drive might be just dirty. Open op the LC, unplug the floppy disk drive and then go about and carefully clean it including the drive head. Be extra careful not to bend it too much. There's good YouTube videos on it, have a look. Chances are it'll boot fine after that. Unfortunately, the logicboard and the PSU are both likely to be in need for a recap. Is the PSU making the "clicking noise" already? The Apple Color Plus 14" display is a nice find. It's not easy to find Apple monitors anymore, at least here. Keep it in any way. If you feel like reviving it, again, there's YouTube tutorials on bringing these old monitors back to life unless the cathode ray is seriously damaged. Alternatively, you may consider doing a little tinker project yourself and find a fitting LCD screen that you'll mount inside of the monitor casing. Good luck! And let us know what becomes of your LC III

ShinobiKenobi 256 MB Posts: 362 System 7 fan	Reply #2 on: July 27, 2024, 07:30 Thanks Bolkonskij! I heard clicking noises before the normal power chime. And I'll follow your advice on cleaning the drive. I also had the idea to fix the monitor. I would really love to see how System 7 runs on a 68k with this monitor. I've had a book on how to repair CRTs for over 10 years. I'll see if I can find some good videos.

lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #3 on: July 29, 2024, 17:16 A long time ago I picked up an LC3 dirt cheap because it was DOA. Mine absolutely needs a recap...one day...meanwhile my LC475 is happy as a clam. Look for discoloration (or other odd "dirt") on the motherboard, especially in the area in the back left (between the PDS slot and the audio jacks). But also near all the other caps, which are silver on mine. I'm praying to the Hardware Gods you don't see it!

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #4 on: August 04, 2024, 14:46 Yes, I find that LC models are, unfortunately, very prone to cap leakage. Nearly all of them need a recap asap. Also some models have the notorious Maxell batteries that just love to bomb and spray their stuff onto the board. An elder person I helped cleaning out his computer lab had one such particular LC he hadn't touched for two decades and he ended up with a bombed Mac. Poor LC.

ShinobiKenobi 256 MB Posts: 362 System 7 fan	Reply #5 on: August 25, 2024, 04:54 Thanks lauland and Bolkonskij for your support. Today I cleaned the floppy drive head(s) and now it reads floppies perfectly. But then discovered another problem: the SCSI hd is bad. All my other SCSI hds are bad, so I'm SOL, unless I buy another one. I thought about trying an IDE/SCSI adapter, but I don't know which one(s) are decent. LC III's logic board looks great (after I dusted it off). It works if I boot up from a floppy, but it's worthless to run off of a floppy, so I'll shelf it for now, satisfied that it actually can work. I also replaced the 3.6 V battery. Now my attention is turned to the LC 520. I found this article about getting a bad hd working again Modern browser needed. Probably works just long enough to backup your data. Fortunately, though, I don't need data off it. Just wish it worked so I could install 7.1. I also found out the LC III only has 4 MB of RAM, so that's interesting. Both slots on the logic board are empty, however. I'm letting my LC 520 stay plugged in and "turned on". Got the idea here.
Last Edit: August 25, 2024, 05:01 by ShinobiKenobi
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #6 on: August 25, 2024, 08:51 Great you got the floppy working again! Those drives are much more reliable than they are credited for - you just need to clean and lubricate them a little and suddenly your 30+ year old drive will spring to life again. Now if only we could say that about CD/DVD drives ... I think what you'll want to do is to toss the old HDD and go for a replacement. I never bothered with them and got no experience trying to get them going again. My understanding is that once they fail, they're prone to fail again real soon. 4 MB of RAM - ouch. That's quite the low end even with 7.1. Did someone strip the machine of it perhaps? Or did it come from somebody who wasn't really into computers and never bothered to upgrade? Know anything of its background? As for the power issue...well, it works, somewhat. But keeping it running all the time here with energy prices in Germany would ruin one :-D ... I guess a professional recap of the PSU would help with that. If you don't feel like doing it yourself, look for some commercial outfit to do it for you? I'm in the process of getting my 7500/100 recapped (it's down to parts now) and using a commercial dealer who offers it here. (it's surprisingly not too expensive)
Last Edit: August 25, 2024, 08:56 by Bolkonskij
MTT 256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer	Reply #7 on: August 26, 2024, 01:45 Quote from: ShinobiKenobi: "I also found out the LC III only has 4 MB of RAM, so that's interesting. Both slots on the logic board are empty, however". Yes, that's the 4MB RAM soldered onto the motherboard. There is only one RAM slot, the two empty slots you mention, one of the slots is possibly an additional VRAM slot. In the RAM slot, it will accept a 80ns or faster 72 pin SIMMs in sizes of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32 MB. A 32MB SIMM will max out the LC III to 36MB. In the VRAM slot, this uses 256K VRAM SIMMs. There is 512K on board, an additional 256K added to this slot would increase the available VRAM to 768K (gains a maximum of 16-bit color (thousands) at 832x624 display resolution). Apple's spec database states that 512K VRAM SIMMs can also be used but this Mac will only access 256K of that, in this slot.
Last Edit: August 26, 2024, 01:50 by MTT
ShinobiKenobi 256 MB Posts: 362 System 7 fan	Reply #8 on: August 26, 2024, 03:49 @Bolkonskij Thanks. I'm skeptical of the power trick mentioned in the link, but still hoping it works. That's a great idea of having a shop recap it. I'm going to start doing some recapping soon. Is it worth the effort replacing every single capacitor? Or just the electrolytic capacitors? Just wondering, cuz I can recap the electrolytic ones, but I don't think I can do the really tiny ones. @MTT I'd been meaning to check that. If only the logic board had one more bit of address width!
Last Edit: August 26, 2024, 03:54 by ShinobiKenobi
lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #9 on: August 26, 2024, 04:33 I really like the LC form factor, so small! And takes the elusive IIe card too! (Very nice having as many "hard drives" as you like for the IIe.) You're very lucky you didn't need to recap the LC3! Ram shouldn't be hard to find (comparatively!) http://www.applerepairmanuals.com/the_manuals_are_in_here/Quadra_605_LC_Series.pdf https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/computing/apple_hardware_devnotes/Mac%20LC%20III.pdf Good luck with the LC520...as far as power goes, that's analog, so never can tell...it's always quite a bit closer to voodoo, than logic, so strange ideas sometimes work and you might never know why, I never discount anything I hear when it comes to that. Components age in strange ways and can compensate for each other unpredictably. Although it has "LC" in the name, the slide-out motherboard has a lot more in common with the Color Classic (sort of a giant one!)...and the concept went on to the 600's, etc. https://www.macdat.net/files/pdf/apple/servicesource/macintosh_lc_520-550-575.pdf https://preterhuman.net/macstuff/techpubs-old/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-68K_Desktop/Mac_LC_520.pdf

ShinobiKenobi 256 MB Posts: 362 System 7 fan	Reply #10 on: August 27, 2024, 07:22 Thanks, Lauland! I really like the small form factor, too. Bolkonskij The computers and monitor came from a school. I don't know anything more than that.

ShinobiKenobi 256 MB Posts: 362 System 7 fan	Reply #11 on: August 29, 2024, 21:06 Well I took the RAM, VRAM, and hd out of the 520 and put them in the LC3, and it worked! Then I went against my better judgement and was going to initialize the hd to install a fresh System 7. Bad idea. I've had bad experiences initializing floppy disks... they're usable, and then after initializing them, they fail verification or something, and now they're unusable. The same thing happened to this hd. It was working perfectly fine, but then initializing it made it unusable and sometimes un-findable. After this, I will simply not initialize any disks ever again. Does anyone have any tips to try to fix this hd? Thanks!

ShinobiKenobi 256 MB Posts: 362 System 7 fan	Reply #12 on: August 30, 2024, 05:34 I took the hd out and connected it to my Power Macintosh 7200/75, and booted into Mac OS 8. Initialized it, and then what I thought would be a good idea... copied the system folder, along with HD SC setup, and Disk First Aid from the Disk Tools floppy to the empty hd so that it would at least boot up to the desktop. At this point, Mac OS 8 and 7 on my 7200 both recognized the hd perfectly normal, then tried it in the LC3 again. The LC3 still can't find it. So then I put it back in my 7200, and now it's saying: This startup disk will not work on this Macintosh model. Use the latest installer to update this disk for this model. (System 7.1 does not work on this model; you need a newer version that does.) So then I turn it off, unplug both IDE/ATA hds from the Tempo Trio. So only the SCSI LC hd and the SCSI CD-ROM are plugged in. Then I booted from my System 7.5.2 CD. I went into Utilities > Drive Setup, which said that it was an unsupported drive. Unsupported?! The 7200 just recognized it a few minutes ago! Then I booted from the 8.1 CD again, and this time it saw a hd, but couldn't initialize it. Then I booted back into the Sys 7 CD, and was able to initialize it so that it was a perfectly normal-looking hd. Then I put it back in the LC III, but Apple HD SC Setup doesn't recognize it. Takes a deep breathe lol

MTT 256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer	Reply #13 on: August 30, 2024, 06:58 @ShinobiKenobi: Try the patched version of Apple HD SC Setup. It recognises most Apple and non-Apple ("unsupported") SCSI HD's. It comes on a bootable System 7.5.3 floppy image which needs writing back to a 1.4MB floppy disk - DL #1 on that Garden page. It's suitable for your LCIII.

lauland 512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!	Reply #14 on: August 30, 2024, 16:51 Yes, the "unsupported" issue is very common, and very irritating. I needed the patched HD setup to get a drive recognized on my 7600 recently. NOTE: Not that it is applicable in the case of m68k machines like you're dealing with, but even then you'll be limited to plain HFS, and limitations of the sizes of partitions it'll create. I eventually needed to format the drive in my G4. (IDE, the 7600 has a card). The LC3 (and LC520), being m68k machines, will have limitations on the partition they can boot from that PPC machines like your 7200 won't...so you can't necessarily count on the same drive booting both unless you're careful. And, of course, be sure you're using HFS and not HFS+! As far as floppies go, it sounds like since you've cleaned your drive, it is more likely (some of) the disks themselves. I bought a bulk bag of hundreds of blank floppies years ago, but still get several rejects...if it has trouble verifying the disk during format, I toss it in the growing pile. I just mark them down to "bit rot".

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