Category Archives: Apple

ImageWriter II Color Ribbon Fix

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If you’ve attempted to use an original color ribbon in your ImageWriter II recently, you’ve quickly found out that the pinch rollers inside the cartridge have disintegrated over time. More specifically, the foam that goes around the rollers that pull the ribbon through the cartridge have fallen apart and turned to sticky dust.

I recently got a few new NOS color ribbons for my ImageWriter II and I wanted to see if I could salvage them. Sure, brand new ribbons are being made again [MacEffects, $29], but I wanted to see if it was possible to clean these up and get them working again.

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iPod 3G: SD Card Upgrade, New Battery, and Flex Cable Repair

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My first iPod was the iPod 3G so I was a little late to the game. I’ve own several iPods after that but the iPod 3G I felt was a perfect distillation of the original iPod experience. Four separate buttons in a row and a touch wheel (nothing moves) seemed like peak iPod design to me (not necessarily UX as you’ll later see).

In this blog post, we’ll cover facts about the iPod 3G, which compact flash and SD adapters work (and which ones don’t), how I prepared my SD card for the iPod, and replacing the battery with a higher capacity one.

My original hard drive no longer works so an update to solid state memory seems like a perfect upgrade.

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Building a Classic Mac Support Server

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If you’re a classic Mac enthusiast, you know that it’s sometimes difficult to enjoy if you don’t have the right tools. Things like the choosing the right system software, the right version(s) of Stuffit Expander, and so forth. Then, getting that software to the machine can be a challenge. Floppy disks are problematic for a number of reasons. Using AppleTalk to connect your classic Mac to a modern network if challenging as support was removed years ago from MacOS X.

Luckily for us, there’s a great pre-made installation called “MacIPRpi” for Raspberry Pi. It delivers a suite of tools that are already configured and ready to use. I’ve used it for a couple of years and it’s worked great. For most folks, this will serve you well!

However, recently I’ve attempted to do certain things it couldn’t handle. This is mainly due to netatalk being updated since the image was created. This blog post contains my notes as I set out to create a newly updated version of this suite of tools from scratch.

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Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30.

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(The following was a Twitter thread on March 10, 2021 for #MARCHintosh.)

But there’s only one slot, you say? It’s all a matter of using a clever part to adapt a pass-through.

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Another Visit to The Computer Museum at System Source in Baltimore MD.

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On July 10, 2021, I visited the Computer Museum at System Source in Baltimore MD as part of the Vintage Computer Federation (VCF) Repair Workshop. I also visited the museum in 2020.

Warning: Image heavy page ahead!

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A Visit to The Computer Museum at System Source, Baltimore, MD

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On Feb 15, 2020, I visited the Computer Museum at System Source in Baltimore, MD as part of a VCF Federation Repair Workshop weekend. The museum there is mind blowing. Want to see some pictures?

Warning: Image heavy page ahead!

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Recapping the Apple PowerBook 160 LCD Display

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(This was originally a Twitter thread from May 26, 2022)

May 26, 2022

Today I’m going to recap the LCD display on this PowerBook 160. It has a passive matrix LCD display capable of displaying 4-bit grayscale (16 shades of gray). The display was dim before with some severe artifacts (after adjusting the contrast slider) but now it will only show a black screen.

@mac84tv has an excellent page that lists the capacitors needed for this recap along with the links to Mouser to purchase.

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Make an Apple // disc for BASIC week at Reddit RetroBattlestations

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Apple //e for BASIC weekBASIC week at Reddit /r/retrobattlestations is over but you can relive the fun on your Apple // without any typing! Simply follow these steps to download the disk image to a new disk for your machine.

  1. Connect your laptop, tablet or phone’s headphone jack to the tape input jack on the back of your Apple // using a 1/8″ mini headphone cable.
  2. Turn the volume up to maximum.
  3. Turn on your machine and hold control and hit reset to get to a ] prompt.
  4. Insert a blank disk into drive 1 (it will be erased!).
  5. Turn on caps lock and type LOAD and hit return.
  6. Begin playing the .WAV file below on your device.

If all goes well, in about 2 minutes you should have a floppy that you can now boot from. When it’s finished, hit return to reboot your machine. ProDOS should load BASIC. Once it does, type LOAD REDDIT and then RUN.

[Apple // .WAV file to disc for BASIC week program 5.5MB]

Credit for creating the .WAV file from a .DSK image goes to C2T found at ASCII Express.

Enjoy!