Thanks to a very kind soul over on the #68kMLA forums who was willing to mail a working #Macintosh LC sound chip across the proverbial pond to me, I'm very happy that the "sold as junk/broken" Mac LC is now fully operational!
To celebrate this, I decided to do a fresh installation of System 7.1 on it. I had up until now been using a modified 7.5.3 based off of the pre-installed images available on the #BlueSCSI website, the same one I had been using for testing and whatnot on my restored Color Classic, but I figured going slightly back in time would help these old machines perform a bit better.
Sadly I don't have an original boxed version of 7.1, those seem exceedingly difficult to come by, so I made some copies and installed it that way.
The difference in boot-up time is already incredible, though I do miss the expandable folders in the Apple menu. Perhaps there's an extension for that under 7.1, not sure.
Either way; everything seems to be running nicely, including the Presto 040 clone card, which really makes a noticeable difference in performance.
Now onto its companion CRT monitor. Recapping it wasn't enough, it seems like there's some more components inside that have gotten damaged by a leaky capacitor, so that journey continues. For now, though, I can at least use a VGA monitor thanks to one of those adapter thingamabobs.
Right after I had replaced the sound chip and had the Mac happily beeping and booping, I actually sat down and played SimAnt for the first time ever (!), and actually was able to complete a whole campaign. I had a blast!
#RetroComputing #ClassicMac #VintageMacintosh #Macintosh #System7 #68k #Apple
To celebrate this, I decided to do a fresh installation of System 7.1 on it. I had up until now been using a modified 7.5.3 based off of the pre-installed images available on the #BlueSCSI website, the same one I had been using for testing and whatnot on my restored Color Classic, but I figured going slightly back in time would help these old machines perform a bit better.
Sadly I don't have an original boxed version of 7.1, those seem exceedingly difficult to come by, so I made some copies and installed it that way.
The difference in boot-up time is already incredible, though I do miss the expandable folders in the Apple menu. Perhaps there's an extension for that under 7.1, not sure.
Either way; everything seems to be running nicely, including the Presto 040 clone card, which really makes a noticeable difference in performance.
Now onto its companion CRT monitor. Recapping it wasn't enough, it seems like there's some more components inside that have gotten damaged by a leaky capacitor, so that journey continues. For now, though, I can at least use a VGA monitor thanks to one of those adapter thingamabobs.
Right after I had replaced the sound chip and had the Mac happily beeping and booping, I actually sat down and played SimAnt for the first time ever (!), and actually was able to complete a whole campaign. I had a blast!
#RetroComputing #ClassicMac #VintageMacintosh #Macintosh #System7 #68k #Apple