Flyback Swap

[radiotvnut]

No, the device should be unplugged from the AC outlet.

[radiotvnut]

The purpose for the CRT ground is to prevent the tube from building up a charge and arcing. There is a strong chance this arcing will cause serious damage to the chassis; especially in the form of blowing semiconductors.

[karmaman]

I see exactly what you mean. On a crappy Gateway CRT I have, the bell of the tube builds up a static charge (you can feel it), I guess the ground strap isn't doing its job. Well thanks everyone, it may be up to two weeks before I receive the flyback so this thread might die for a while, but once I do the swap I will upload pics + results.

EDIT: I should probably add, by "Gateway CRT" I mean a computer monitor I have laying around. It's only 5 years old and was my main monitor for three years, the tube is already starting to show signs of wear (dim and bad convergence at the edges) and it's experiencing vertical foldover. Coincidentally, it's Chinese-made.

[dr.ido]

The quality of Apple's monitors really seemed to die when LG started making them. I scrapped a 17" studio monitor (the one with the awful 3 pronged base, Mitsubshi CRT, LG chassis) today. I've lost count of how many of those I've seen with bad flybacks.

I've got a few iMacs with bad flybacks. I ran one in a different case for a while after installing the missing ADB connector so I could use my old extended keyboard.

The 20 year old Sony made monitor that came with my Mac II is still going.

[andy]

True, although I'm using an origianl 22" cinema display LCD that was also made by LG. It's 8 years old and still looks great. It was the largest LCD in production when it was made.

At least they didn't go with Samsung's wonderful CRTs that died after a couple o fyears. They were the only CRTs I've ever seen where emission on all 3 guns fell completely to zero. It took a while to figure out on the first one I saw.

[MRX37]

Originally Posted by andy

At least they didn't go with Samsung's wonderful CRTs that died after a couple o fyears. They were the only CRTs I've ever seen where emission on all 3 guns fell completely to zero. It took a while to figure out on the first one I saw.

Interesting. I've had many Samsung CRT's and they haven't gone bad on me. Usually the rest of the monitor failed before the Samsung CRT did.

The worst Samsung CRT I've seen is 7 years old, and it had the Windows taskbar burnt into the bottom of the screen. Other then that it's still decently bright.

[karmaman]

Those little 13" Sony-made Apple monitors are unbelievable, I've seen a few and they are the brightest, most colorful displays I have ever seen, I'm hoping to run across one soon. Also I never knew the Apple three-prong base monitors had an LG chassis (although I knew about the Mits tube). I always thought those monitors had an unbelievably good picture and I'm always looking out for one.

[MRX37]

I have to admit that I don't care for the iMac very much. I used to use a computer lab that was full of them.

They came with a game called "Bugdom". This game ran slow even in low graphics mode. This is a game that came bundled with the syetem and when there were too many ants on the screen, the game would run like a slide show.

They also generated a LOT of heat! So much infact that the computer lab room slowly grew warmer throughout the day. Keep in mind that this was a large room with about 10 iMacs in it.

Also, we had the type with the slot loading CD ROM drive. One of the drives failed, and the whole thing had to be taken apart to rescue the CD.

[karmaman]

Holy crap do these things run hot! It warmed up the corner of my room where my desk is after 2 hours of use. Funny you should mention Bugdom, that's what I was playing on it.

I'm quite fond of the original iMac (although I hate Apple's recent junk), "we" go way back. In second grade, computers fascinated me. I had a crappy old Power Mac 60Mhz at home that I loved, I would actually read the manuals that came with it over and over, back to back, whenever I was bored. I had no internet, and only 5 games on that computer, but I was 8, what did I care? Computers were magical boxes to me back then, and I didn't really care about how they worked, just about using them. I would always take short quizzes about books I read on the Macs at school, I accumulated points for every quiz and at the end of the year I got to spend them all "buying" prizes, the program was called Accelerated Reading.

They had us take the quizzes on some old Power Macs (similar to what I had at home), and I was in there daily. One day, I walked in and saw a brand new iMac Bondi Blue in place of a Power Mac they had replaced. It was so cool!! It was see-through! I remember pointing at it and asking the librarian "What's that?" They told me it was a new computer and that they liked it because the keyboard was black and it didn't get dirty very easily.

After that day, I started reading more books just to spend time on that cool new iMac. I started begging my parents for one, even literally dreaming of having an iMac. I was as obsessed with it as much as any second grader could be obsessed with anything. Soon, the entire library and eventually the entire school upgraded to iMacs, I remember staring at the one on the on the teacher's desk and dreaming of some day having my own, reading two books a day (they were short) just so I could take more quizzes on my beloved iMac.

Eventually, I started telling the librarian that I needed to take quizzes, sitting on the iMac that faced across from her so she couldn't see the screen, and quitting out of Accelerated Reading and just clicking on all the menus and opening the control panels, and for some reason opening the CD drive and pushing it back in fascinated me. For two years I asked my parents for an iMac, "It's just ten 100-dollar bills" I remember saying..... I never did get my iMac, eventually I forgot about it when they got me a Windows machine in 5th grade.

A few months ago, I bought this particular iMac off someone on Craigstlist, it's the original Bondi Blue mac, just like the first one I ever used, the one I pointed at and asked "What's that?", the one I stared at every time we went to Sears.... So I guess you could say the original iMac is pretty significant to me, not the particular one I have but the original iMac in general. I did end up getting that iMac I wanted so badly.... Just 9 years too late and in need of a new FBT.

[andy]

I feel old now. We had Apple IIs for most of the time I was in school. Pentium Is were high end when I was a senior in HS.

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by andy

I feel old now. We had Apple IIs for most of the time I was in school. Pentium Is were high end when I was a senior in HS.

I graduated HS in '95 and most of the computers in use were IBM PC Jr's and those little IBM's that had the monitor, disk drive, and CPU all built in the same case. They were outdated even in '95; but, they were still in use. I remember our class getting the lecture from our 7th grade computer science teacher telling us that the IBM PC Jr's. were obsolete and parts were not available; so, we must take care of them.

[MRX37]

One thing I liked about macs was the Simpletext program. (text to speech)

I'd type in <><><><><><><><><><><><><> and it would say "less is then greater then less then greater then less then greater then less then greater then less then greater then less then greater then less then greater then less........." and the voice would get lower and lower.

[dr.ido]

The first Macs that I spent any real time with were the Mac Plus and Mac Classics at school. At the time I wasn't really that interested in them. The Apple ][e room was much more fun. They were considered outdated by most of the staff and other students, so you never had to wait for a machine (there were always queues for the Macs), had better games and you could gain admin rights over the ][e side of the network without anyone noticing. Messing with other users provided hours of fun for a 12 year old and the staff just assumed things weren't working right because they were "the old computers". Not long after I left that school they got rid of the ][es. I wish I had known about it. I would have liked to own "my" ][e, #9 with 3 disk drives and the only color monitor in the room.

My first Mac was a Mac Plus that had been dropped cracking the neck of the CRT. I replaced it with a green CRT from an old Compaq portable. It worked, but it looked really weird.

In the late 90s various companies started dumping a lot of Macs on the used market. They were sold cheaply at the PC-centric swap meets and I quickly acquired a collection of 68k and early PPC machines. I'll always have a soft spot for the LC475. I was impressed by what that little machine could do after I upgraded it with a 33MHz CPU, 36MB RAM and an ethernet card.

The iMacs didn't impress me as much as the older machines. Eventually one of the later models will come my way, but so far my upgraded 7500 runs OS X better than my Rev C iMac.

[karmaman]

Yeah, Rev A-D iMacs are slower than the old G3 Power Macs even though the Power Macs had slower CPU's, the bus was faster on the Power Mac. I really wish Apple hadn't been so proprietary, I want to get an old Power Mac 7100/80 (PPC) on my network but it needs some funky adapter to get online through ethernet... on the other hand, I can pick up an NIC for $5 at Fry's and pop it into any random old PC and it'll work.

I guess it's what makes Apple, Apple. Do you like their new stuff though? I think they're too occupied with the iPod/iPhone, they're not all about computers anymore like they used to be.

[dr.ido]

This is turning into the Mac thread.

Originally Posted by karmaman

Yeah, Rev A-D iMacs are slower than the old G3 Power Macs even though the Power Macs had slower CPU's, the bus was faster on the Power Mac. I really wish Apple hadn't been so proprietary, I want to get an old Power Mac 7100/80 (PPC) on my network but it needs some funky adapter to get online through ethernet... on the other hand, I can pick up an NIC for $5 at Fry's and pop it into any random old PC and it'll work.

I guess it's what makes Apple, Apple. Do you like their new stuff though? I think they're too occupied with the iPod/iPhone, they're not all about computers anymore like they used to be.

Actually the 7500 has a 50MHz bus where the Rev A-D iMacs have a 66MHz bus. The problem I had running OS X on the iMac was simply a lack of RAM. The Rev A-D iMacs have a RAM limit of 384MB, but getting there is difficult as they are very fussy about what SO-DIMMs will work. I could never find a combination of the SO-DIMMs I had that would give me more than 160MB. Even my 6100/66 managed 264MB with standard SIMMs (not that it would ever run OS X even with the 240MHz G3 card in it).

I found that while OS X will run with less it needs 512MB RAM to be comfortable. With 512MB of RAM and a 350MHz G3 card in the 7500 it ran OS X well enough to be a usable machine for most day to day applications, certainly better than a 350MHz Pentium II box trying to run Windows XP.

The ethernet connector on a 6100/7100/8100 is an AAUI connector. While finding an AAUI transceiver in the average computer store is almost impossible there are usually a few on ebay for around $10. The alternatives are to use a NUBUS ethernet card or hardwire a transceiver to the motherboard, but that's too much effort to save $10.

I've no interest in iPhones (I'd still use my old brick phone if I could, fancy phones do nothing for me) or iPods. I doubt I'll get to play with an Intel based Mac for a few years yet. I like getting my gear for nothing or almost nothing too much to buy new gear. This is a lot easier with PC stuff though. Pentium 4 class PCs are regularly dumped, but I doubt anyone will be throwing out their G5 or Intel Macs for a while yet.