Forum Moderators: travelin cat
Thanks!
BTW, I saw the 3.6v battery in a battery store today. About $9. Price will depend on the store and geographic location, so YMMV. Or, YPMV (Your Price May Vary).
Upgrading makes sense only in a few cases (e.g., too lazy to transfer data to a new computer (the reason for upgrading my 7600), don't want to run OS X, very limited funds). Barleycorn, what are your plans for her after you fix her and name her? (I don't name my cars or computers, so I can't help you with that. ;) )
My boyfriend's original network was named for the Pac Man ghosts. Blinky was the old PowerPC that never worked.
:D
So, do you have any other computers? Any favorite TV shows, books, or movies? Notice any personality traits in your computers? Ta-daa!
Command+Option+P+R
starts running, but doesn't turn over. still grey screen...
if you cannot get it going, you are basically left with three options:
1) use it as a doorstop
2) turn it into a macaquarium - http*://www.macaquarium.com/
3) Mac-in-the-box shelving units - http*://www.fief.org/macshelves/
Do you have an Apple store near you? An electronics store like Radio Shack? A battery store? Those places should have the battery. It should say "Lithium 3.6V" on the side. It is as big 'round as a AA battery, but much shorter. That is the one you need...if you can safely keep the computer disassembled, you could take it apart first and take the battery with you to the store.
R.
My boy got his Newton e-mate 300 off of e-Bay for some ridiculous price some years back, and used it to take notes in his CS classes.
He put the wireless card in it-- I forget what kind it was, but its brand name was "Buffalo"-- so off-brand we figured we'd never find it, but we walked into the networking section of J&R Computer World in Manhattan and it was the first wireless card we saw on the shelf!
We took it as an omen.
A note: surfing the Web with it is ridiculously slow. They recommend freeing up as much memory as possible, so last night Dave (my boy) pulled everything that was on the computer off of it, deleted everything except the OS and the necessary Internet programs, and tried again. Still wretched. So, he's thinking of either upgrading its memory or giving up on websurfing. Yes, it's cool, and yes, it works, but it's really slow.
So, depending on the cost of memory (they DO still make it), it may be usable; I'll let y'all know if you're interested.
Whether it does or not, the wireless card is worth its cost (about $50) because now it can be docked with any of the computers on our network to transfer files. New Macs don't have serial ports, so otherwise if we wanted to retrieve something from the Newton, we had to connect it to the cranky SE-30, deal with the SE-30's slowness, and then try to get the SE-30 to talk to the Powerbook over the network, which it sometimes didn't want to do. We tried connecting it to the PC and it just wouldn't. So... now it can work with any other machine. Which is just so handy...
Are there any discussion groups about fans of old computers and so on? There should be. I'm not oldschool or hardcore by any means: i think my first computer was a 486 or something. I just like having nifty old stuff around the house. (My parents were historical re-enactors, so I grew up with Revolutionary / Civil War / World War I paraphernalia all over the house. The smell of black powder smoke makes me homesick. :) Maybe I just like old gadgets.)
R.
It's just nice to use something *different* once in a while.
My boy chose it over getting a Palm or something because it had a full keyboard. His problem was that he couldn't keep up with taking notes because his handwriting was too slow, and he also wanted to have the notes in digitized format for easier review later. Getting a Palm just didn't make sense; you have to write even slower. Yes, you can get keyboards for them, but...
And he couldn't afford a laptop, which seemed excessive. So...
There's just something about having something almost nobody else has, that's perfect for your needs, that didn't cost you your life savings because it was so new and cool...
I like it because it automatically saves everything you're working on as you do it-- because it has to quit a program to open another one, and it's quicker if it's already saved your current work. So even if it crashes, you lose nothing. Perfect in something like that.
I've never even tried a Palm. They didn't strike me as cool at all... Most people I knew who had one were twits. I'm slowly getting over that, as I get over my prejudice against people with cellphones. (I have one now. Oh dear.)
Anyhow, happy hunting. I'm cluttering up the thread! Going now!
it's the battery.
I have been wracking my feeble brain trying to put my hands on a photo of
where the battery is located AND
where the "logic board power circuit reset switch" (geeks call them a "CUDA" switch") is located on your model. Because after you change the battery, you've also got to depress that switch for a few seconds.
Any Mac geek worth his flat Mountain Dew and stale Doritos can spot it for you.
This web page
[academ.com...]
covers the topic in genral but doesn't have anything specific to your model. DRAT.
Go to this url [fearlessheart.info...]
to see the battery on my kids 7600 (7600 are KIND of similar to yours. )NOTE: LOOK at the battery after you snap the black palstic cover off but BEFORE you pull out the battery NOTE which way "plus" and "minus" are oriented. You can put it in backwards and it will cause BIG problems. (You DID read the tutorial mentioned above DIDN"T YOU?)(Just kidding, of course you did! )(;-}) You've all heard the old saw about "RTFM" of course. But then again, the thing that i like about Macs is that often times, you don't have to read the manual. But i digress....
Here is the reset switch on the 7600.
[fearlessheart.info...]
On many versions of the 9600 the little plastic 'dot" that you depress is red, that's handy! I press straight down on the plastic dot in the center with the eraser on a pencil. The book says to use a "nonconductive object."
Good luck!
Another reason to use odd, old computers! My Win2K meltdown elicited neither sympathy nor interest from anyone. That's why I'm never going back. ;)
>Do you think mac aquariums would be hard to clean out?
Yes. It says so in the directions to make them. They're hard to maintain. Too bad... Maybe I should make my old CRT monitor into a fishbowl instead. :D The fish could get a little bit more light. But it'd need quite a bit more engineering... Hm.
I had a buddy who once bought a station wagon load of old Macs at an auction for $10 and made an SE 30 into an aquarium. After awhile it started leaking, but it attracted a lot of attention until then!
By definition, Pee Sea users just don't have that level of (pick one:) imagination, time on their hands, insanity....
You missed "cool old hardware", which is I think the crucial one. I have plenty of old PC hardware, just none of it that would look that cool as a computer. Though I'd be interested in seeing what a normal old monitor would look like as an aquarium.
I only switched to being a Mac user myself this past Saturday. I haven't even gotten rid of my PC yet. :/
They said (paraphrasing, of course) to 1) make sure everything is plugged in to the wall; 2) unplug everything from the computer, including the mouse/keyboard and try starting up with the power button on the front; 3) push the cuda button (and they have a picture of one!); 4) replace the battery; 5) take it to an Apple Authorized dealer. This is in the Aug '03 issue, so it should still be on the shelves.
Anyone wanting to learn more about Macs, I highly recommend MacAddict.
Oh?
[mini-itx.com...]
The inverse of the MacQuarium:
Putting a PC into strange objects.
These, by the way, are fully-functioning, high-powered PCs.
There's a guy with an SE-30 shell...
And if you scroll down on that main page, there's one in a six-string accoustic guitar. search for the toaster. It's pretty cool. There's one in a case made of Legos. ("A slimline DVD drive is exactly 16 Lego bricks wide.") There's one in an old metal lunchbox.
And some guy turned a power supply into a computer. Weirdos...
If I ever get a PC again, I'm getting one of those.
