I'm very excited to show you this it's
the original Macintosh the computer that paved the way for how we use computers
over the last 40 years and I can't believe I have one now the last time I
took it out it did all work which is pretty impressive for something this old
the question now is does this family heirloom still work today well there's
only one way to find out okay Moment of
Truth okay it made the sound oh it needs
a disc that's right these didn't have hard drive so the operating system
software and all your files were stored on a floppy
disc it's broken oh this is disappointing I was hoping to show you
how this works but it's a little Haggard the disc drives need to fix and kids
have drawn all over the case I hope that's
it I see a nightmare in front of me is what I see what seriously guiding me on
this journey is David Murray whom you might know as the 8bit guy on this very
website if you're like me you've seen him restore yellowed and tired old
technology back to their original Glory which is exactly what I'm hoping to do
yeah I'm not real fond of working on those how many macintoshes have you have
you fixed yourself of that particular style I don't know four or five not not
a whole lot I kind of avoid them like a plague now just because every one that
I've tried to work on has ended up being a nightmare not exactly confidence
inspiring but there is a reason why I reached out to David how did you get
into fixing these old computers and and what do you love about it well I don't
always love it sometimes it can be extraordinarily
frustrating I do like collecting and playing on the old computers it is very
satisfying when you manage to fix one or restore one that was not previously
working I have my work cut out for me is what you're saying I got a lot of my
skills for repairing computers when I worked at a computer store for many many
years and not only did I learn G gain a lot of experience in repairing but I
also learned how to clean them and things that I would originally thought
were impossible to get rid of like you know sticker residue and permanent
marker and stuff like that I learned how to clean all that stuff off so that we
could put this stuff back on the shelf and it would look presentable again to
to the customer you know when my Mac broke I was like I think there's I know
who to call so I appreciate you helping me out with this I'm both a bit
intimidated but also inspired to do this so it's exciting to see how this goes
all right here we go I'm so nervous I
have to work around a CRT screen which apparently is Magic and full of lots of
volts and I have to somehow remove the
disc drive so one of the things I'm probably most worried about is opening
it up because I'm a bit of a delicate soul and I don't want to break anything
so what should I know about uh you know opening the computer up okay so the
number one Challenge on an old compact Mac like that is you're going to need
need what we call the Mac cracker it's a Torx driver it's a number T15 but it has
to be really long I what about like getting in the plastic and like
splitting it apart once you get the screws off it won't be a problem oh my
gosh check this out this is really cool these original Mac they had everyone who
worked on the project sign in the plastic casing old technology like this
is delightfully mechanical but of course that means there are more parts and
points where things can go wrong it also means I need to figure out how these old
disc drives even work so we got this logic board on the bottom this is the
motor for moving the head this is the motor for the eject
mechanism oh well that went in do you think it was just like it was just so
dirty that the whole reason I can't get discs in here is just cuz it just got
groy and I just need to clean it it's possible okay so this one that one's
working actually this one is not cuz if
I push on this oh there we go okay this one's really stiff the other problem is
the disc drives almost every one of them is broken there's a one particular gear
in there that uh over time just with age
it becomes brittle and breaks and so the disc drops don't work anymore yes it
turns out that my drives don't even use those problematic gears they're the old
400k drives with a completely different eject mechanism but we did order the
gears anyway just in case I found three options on eBay from the sell's Retro
shopbox happy gesture and Steven lulls
and they sell for between $ 12 and $15 for a three or 4 pack so which one works
it's hard to say cuz I actually don't need to use these but I think the best
looking one is from Steven LS which are the white ones on eBay everything needs
to be regreased that's all there is it's all just stiff and goopy old and that's
just what happens let's screw this back together and see if I have made a
difference and fixed my own drive I'm not going to push it all the way
in cuz then I need to I'll need to get it out I so tempted to though you have
to how else are you going to know if it works great now it's stuck you did it it
works you know I always have anxiety for
like doing things like this because everything's new and I'm so afraid of
doing something wrong but there is a you know a
satisfaction to kind of figuring things out you kind of feel like a
genius well these aren't going in nicely
why look okay I'm going to have to take it apart anyway so I'm just going to put
in just lightly lightly tightly it's
time to try the disc and before I do me refurbishing this Macintosh reminds me
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below okay let's actually see if the dis
drives work from like a writing and reading perspective and so that requires
setting this thing up again so all the
discs I actually have for this Mac aren't available um so we have to make
discs and so I bought a set of these floppies from eBay and you can't just
buy any floppy from the store they have to be an old style DD style floppy which
um I hope works and then this is the floppy emu so what it does is it
emulates an external floppy drive like this into the mac and it's one of the
only ways you can get any data in and
out of the Mac outside of using Mac formatted floppies so hopefully we can
reformat these from dos floppies into Mac floppies and upload the software
hopefully this just works now all I have to do is plug this in the back and this
in here I should probably read the manual first shouldn't I it doesn't let's just turn
it on and see what happens oh that's cool it lit up Fu bwow
one zero binary I haven't seen binary since I was a kid that's not sure I
didn't see any binary as a kid
look it works okay I'm going to try and
open up a version of the Macintosh operating system system 1.2
system 2 1.1 okay let's just open up system 1.1
since that's sort of like what the original was and see what happens of when we put a dis in we got image writer
we got font mover we got a clipboard we got fonts look at that um what I want to
do now is I want to see if I can format this disc in the Mac system and then
maybe like put the software on look at I
mean that was in its plastic wrap after
how long it's so new it's in in French
if I format this with the French operating system is it going to format in French let's try
it it's working I can hear it making dis
noises all right it's copying no progress bars even back in the Mac days
so I guess when we were complaining about it on the iPad we are being
unfair we're going to do one more disc I want two discs cuz then I can see how
the other Drive works okay so I'm going to now turn the computer off we're going
to unplug the floppy Emil we're going to plug this in this was causing me the
most grief put this down
here put this in here what it now can't read this disc
anymore is
it all the discs I made have have forked
it doesn't like them oh yeah I should admit with the disc drives I have two
disc drives and right now if I make a disc in one drive it won't work in the
other and vice versa so I don't know what's going on there say a head
alignment issue if it uh I've never seen that in a 3 and 1 half in Drive although
I can't imagine why couldn't have that problem yeah oh that's not a good thing
and I don't have any proper Macintosh discs at the moment so I can't verify
which Drive is out of
alignment so now I have to clean the computer which I actually think is going
to be the most annoying part because it's
tedious um and I'm not sure if I want to
do a retro bright but as you can see it
has yellowed somewhat actually quite a bit oh the dust
bunnies one of the things that I get most anxiety about when like fixing or
cleaning things is that sometimes I feel like when you fix something you make it
worse cuz you're getting in there and messing about with stuff and you may
have fixed one thing but you jostled something else that's what I'm worried
about and now I will clean I think the biggest concern
for you would be getting all that pencil and stuff off of there if you haven't
tried wet baking soda yet I would recommend giving that a try just
sprinkle baking soda all over it and then spray it with like water and then
just scrub it with either like a scrub brush or just a folded paper towel or
something like that and just really work uh work it in there I bet that we'll get
that cleared up pretty good like all the like dirt that gets
ingrained into the Rin of the plastic is
like is out which is actually like really satisfying to see but if you want
to make the plastic lighter you have to do what's retrobrite which is submerging
it in a uh hydrogen peroxide solution
out in the sun for multiple hours and the heat so that's a different step this
is just everyday sort of like domestic
dishes what about like in the in the great the little like kind of louvers
and the greates and stuff like that just use like a a like a toothbrush or
something like that to get in there real good and uh and then of course be
prepared you're going to need to rinse it rinse it off afterwards but I found a number of occasions where baking soda
like I thought something needed to be retr brighten and then after I did
baking soda to it I kind of looked at it I'm like oh everywhere I've scrubbed it it's much brighter
now I'm really pleased with how this turned out the baking soda for the win
um also I don't think I need to retrobrite the whole computer just the
keyboard cuz if you look the keyboard's a little bit yellower than the Mac if
you compare the inside Plastics to the outside Plastics if they're the same
color chances are it probably does not need to be retrored usually when they
yellow it's only going to be on the outside if you can find a crate big
enough to submerge the whole thing under liquid then I would go that route um
you're far less likely to wind up with streaks or or marbling effect or
anything like that hi are you retr bride expert yeah
don't why so here's what happens when you retro prite okay it will go back to the
original color and then 2 3 4 years down the road it will be twice as dark as
that really yeah also you're better off by actually using a heated solution but
what if it's out in the sun if the water's already warm well if it's out in
the sun then it's going to heat up the hydrogen peroxide yeah that's what my
plan was but you're saying this is a bad idea retr brighting in general I'm not a
big fan of the problem is like it's not that bad this yellowing mhm and so like
I'm only need to really retro like the only thing I need to retrade is this like space bar and this top and like I
guess this a little bit otherwise it's fine all right but you're
now making me scared well you're not going to destroy it but this is my
beloved computer well that's my cute
exit
so I got the computer done look at it it's beautiful it looks very good
congratulations it really does I wasn't expecting this transformation for years
I've put off cleaning this Old Mac mainly because of how tedious it all
seemed and it is tedious but seeing it
right here right now I can tell you that it's certainly worth it I guess what
would you say to people who might be in a similar situation who might have an old computer and maybe don't know you
know if it's worth anything or if it's worth fixing what should they do well I
guess a Google search would be one thing obviously I always recommend reaching
out to um various social media groups
that are focused on that particular computer it doesn't matter what kind it
is whether it's a Tandy or an apple or a Commodore or whatever you find a
community of people like that and just ask do you did you have any sort of
heirlooms that you've restored over the years unfortunately um not really
because everything that I had back then was essentially lost a time and I've
reacquired similar machines but they're they're not the originals that I had do
you wish you still had the originals or was it like it was perfectly fine just
getting the you know taking advantage well yeah I have a friend who um I knew
back at that time and he still has his original commodor 64 and I'm kind of
jealous about that for a couple of reasons one just from the like you say
the heirloom aspect of it but the other thing is he still has all of the discs
with programs that he wrote uh or programs that he typed in for
magazines and and things like that and I don't have any of that so I had written
all these programs back in the'80s and they're all lost and so yeah I would
love to be able to look through these old discs and look at you know programs
I wrote when I was 6 Seven 8 years old I don't have any of that so that's that's
what I really wish I had more than the actual computers themselves the content
yeah no totally it's so hard to know like what you're going to want to keep
when you're cleaning out out right so I'm really pleased with how this turned
out it looks and feels far better than the day I got it a small old computer
like this is perfect for putting on display just like you would with any
other antique only this is better because you can turn it on use it and
wow you're friends thank you for all your help I really appreciate it thanks
for restoring this Mac Address back to its original Glory if you're big on
decorating your home with antique computers give this video a like and if
you only care about new computers well then I guess you can subscribe now I'm
curious who of you has an old Relic like this that needs some TLC comment below
what it is what needs to be done or if you've actually fixed it how it went