Sunday, August 30, 2020

My first Macintosh SE/30!

The Macintosh SE/30 is considered by many the holy grail of the Classic Macs. It is the fastest and most expandable of the classics 9" B&W form factor Macintoshes. It can accept up to a whopping 128Mb of RAM (!!!), what is impressive for a machine that was released back in Jan/1989.

Sunday, August 9, 2020

Rebuilding an iBook G3 Clamshell battery

As the Clamshell and retro laptops in general get older, it gets harder and harder to find batteries for them. That's understandable as the demand is also negligible and most older laptops end up on a landfill or at a electronics recycling facility unfortunately. Luckily for us, retro computer enthusiasts and collectors alike, it is possible to rebuild some older laptop batteries with standard new cell you can still buy today.

The iBook G3 Clamshell is a classic Apple laptop from the late 90s and early 2000s (it was sold from 1999 to 2001 to exact). It has the now "iconic" colour shell that matched the iMac G3 CRTs of that era. For their unique design and relatively low duration run (it had less than a 2 years run), it is also getting harder to find and thus its price has increased. 

More details about the iBook G3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook

An indigo iBook G3 clamshell and it's unique holder 

Sunday, August 2, 2020

Pixlas power supply mod on a Mac Pro 4,1/5,1

Once again, let's talk about a very important mod/upgrade you can do to your classic Mac Pro (cMP): the Pixlas mod. The Pixlas mod will allow you to install a more power GPU into the Mac Pro that it was designed for, by drawing more current directly from the power supply of the cMP as opposed to using power connectors available on the motherboard. 


If you try to install a powerful GPU

Before proceeding, some key links you should read before jumping in:

- The House of Moth - Pixlas Mod tutorial (excellent and detailed instructions provided by Jay)
- MacProUpgrade facebook community