2015 Donations

I can’t always publish an article for every item I receive, so I would like to publicly thank all the people I still haven’t cited that contacted me during the last year to donate some material related to my passion.

Paolo C., Milan

Apple Macintosh Quadra 950
PowerPC Upgrade Board
Spare motherboard

The Quadra 950 was the fastest and more expandable Macintosh among those with the 68000 family processor: a 68040 clocked at 33Mhz, up to 256MB of RAM, 5 NuBus expansion slots. It was only surpassed by the Quadra 840AV, with a 40Mhz 68040, then Apple started to use the PowerPC processors. To ease the transition, for a brief period Apple sold a PowerPC upgrade board – installed in this machine – that had to be connected to the Processor Direct Slot (PDS).

I thank Carlo Santagostino for collecting the items and putting them in storage for a while.

This Mac functioned perfectly, I just cleaned it and serviced the floppy drive.

Apple Macintosh Quadra 950

 

Davide C., Padua

Apple Macintosh SE
Apple Macintosh SE/30
Zenith Z-Star 433VLp portable computer

I met Davide and his wife at the beginning of this year while they were on a trip to visit Aquileia, sadly (for their day off) on a rainy day.

Both Macs had a defective hard drive, but I managed to “repair” one of them by gently slapping it, freeing the internal arm. I replaced the other one with a spare hard drive of the same era. I removed the batteries, that fortunately made no damage to the motherboard; the two compact Macs work fine, they’re just a bit yellowed.

As usual I disassembled the computers to clean them. Here’s the Macintosh SE…

Apple Macintosh SE

 

…and the Macintosh SE/30:

Apple Macintosh SE/30

 

The Zenith laptop has no particular problem except a dead battery, that luckily only damaged the contacts between the battery and the computer. After setting up the hard disk parameters in the BIOS, the computer boots fine almost every time… sometimes Windows 95 doesn’t recognize the graphic board, but it works in safe mode, so it should be just a software issue.

Zenith Data Systems Z-Star 433 VLp

 

Maurizio L., Novara

Apple Macintosh Quadra 950 (as spare parts)
Apple Power Macintosh 9600/200

I thank my friend Alberto that collected the items and brought them to me when he came nearby. Both machines were very dirty; the 9600 is complete and working, but the 950 has some issues and is missing the side panel.

Here’s a picture of the metal case of the 9600 after being disassembled and cleaned. The 9600 was one of the last PowerPC machines of the 604 family before the G3 processor.

Apple Power Macintosh 9600

 

Magri family, Limbiate (MB)

Commodore 386SX-LT portable computer
Commodore MPS1224C printer

Sadly the 386 case is heavily ruined by the leak of battery acid, but after a thorough clean the computer boots to the BIOS screen, so there’s still hope :-)

Fabio, Udine

Apple Macintosh LC 475
Apple Macintosh Color Display 14″
AppleCD 300
Apple iMac “Flower Power”

Everything is in a good shape and perfectly working.

Sergio M., Guidizzolo (MN)

A box of old Apple manuals and catalogues

Enrico G., Udine

Apple Power Macintosh 7300/166
Apple Multiple Scan Display 17″
Apple Power Mac G4 “Mirrored Drive Doors” (spare parts)
Apple Cinema Display 20″

The 7300 and its 17″ monitor are working fine; the G4 is missing the hard drive and has a dead power supply. The Cinema Display is slightly burnt for the heavy usage, but still works perfectly and is a nice addiction to any G4 computer of the era that had an ADC connection.
Apple Cinema Display 20"

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