Color Classic falls victim to leaky caps

After nearly 20 years of service the Macintosh Color Classic that powers the Color Classic web server succumbed to the fate most common to vintage electronics: leaking capacitors. If you examine the picture of the logic board above you can see the evidence yourself - the dark areas around the three round capacitors in the upper right corner are the most telling.

The Color Classic web server has been extremely reliable until recently so when the picture disappeared last week I thought it might be related to the CRT. Swapping out the logic board with a replacement brought it back to life, and examining the original logic board revealed the telltale dull, dark areas around the capacitors that signify the aluminum capacitors have leaked their electrolyte onto the circuit board causing connections to fail and the computer to no longer work properly.

For an in-depth guide on how to fix this symptom yourself, check out this page from the 68kMLA Wiki that includes directions and replacement part numbers for those who can confidently perform soldering operations.

But fear not, the Color Classic web server will be back! The original board is currently being repaired by a professional and in the interim is temporarily online with a backup logic board. That board unfortunately has issues of its own, so uptime may suffer somewhat until the repaired board is reinstalled.

Meanwhile, I recently acquired another Color Classic with a Daystar PowerCache 33 accelerator and will be profiling it here soon. Stay tuned!

Happy New Year!

As 2011 comes to a close and 2012 is minutes away I wish everyone a wonderful New Year with much joy and happiness.

Did you know Apple had a design for a phone and a tablet in 1983? Neither did I. Check out the pictures on Jay Mug.

colorclassic.com domain moves to a new host

I recently transferred colorclassic.com from GoDaddy to DomainDiscover, an awesome registrar where all of my other domains are registered.

The transfer was smooth and quick but I forgot to set up news.colorclassic.com as a separate CNAME entry pointing to this blog so it's been offline for a few days. Hopefully things are back to normal and I can start sharing some interesting info about the Color Classic server's uptime and maintenance, as well as tips on creating your own retro Mac server!

Rolling blackouts in Texas force CC server offline

The winter weather affecting the nation has caused rolling blackouts in Texas as power companies are struggling to provide enough electricity to keep the state warm. Since the Color Classic server is not colocated in a server facility with backup generators it has spent several hours offline. Until the blackouts are over I am redirecting the domain to this address.

Most posts over at classicmacs.org

I've spent most of my time documenting my work with the Color Classics in my home at my related web site, classicmacs.org

That site includes other vintage Macs I've accumulated or am seeking for my collection of Classic Macs. Stop by if you have a chance and check it out!

January uptime: missed it by THAT much

The January uptime numbers for the Color Classic web server are in (courtesy of websitepulse.com) and with just a single failure to respond over 31 days we came as close as possible to 100% without getting there.

 

Spring has historically been a tough time for the CC web server since thunderstorms in Central Texas often cause temporary outages for the power, cable, or both, so that 100% uptime goal is a little harder to reach. Although it's connected to a UPS along with the cable modem and router the battery is only good for about half an hour.

2009 uptime for the Color Classic web server

2009 started off a bit rocky for uptime, as a combination of a flaky router and spring thunderstorms in central Texas combined to take the server offline when it lost its internet connection or electrical power. Replacing the router and adding a UPS improved uptime significantly as you can see from the bar graph below.

The final tally for 2009 as recorded by websitepulse.com (who kindly monitors this site for free!) is an uptime of just under 98%. While that's a remarkable statistic for a computer that's 16 years old operating on residential broadband internet connection, there's still room for for improvement. Here's hoping 2010 will bring uptime over the 99% average!

Color Classic Web Server - HTTP
Month	Total Checks	Fails	Avg resp.time	Uptime %
1 Jan - 31 Dec 2009	9054	196	3,563.72	97.84 %
Report generated on: 13 Jan 2010 Website Monitoring Data provided by WebSitePulse