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!

Hard drive transplant complete

The original Quantum 80 MB hard disk drive in the Color Classic web server finally called it quits after 15 years of service and as a result the site was offline while a replacement was located and installed. Since a hard drive replacement involves removing the rear case and exposing the high voltage CRT anode I relied on my skilled colleague Lowell who kindly devoted far more time than either of us expected to this task.

Locating a SCSI drive is not a quick and simple task anymore, but a donor Apple-labeled 160 MB Quantum drive was finally installed, formatted, and restored successfully. During the process Lowell put in a replacement battery and used canned air to remove plenty of dust that had settled inside over the years. Freshened and ready for action, the server was brought back online this afternoon and dyndns.org pointers set back to normal for the domain.

We encountered some interesting challenges in formatting the new drive and restoring the software which I will write about shortly. Needless to say when you don't use troubleshooting skills for legacy machines you forget them completely. Thank goodness for the internet where you can search and find answers from others who have taken the time to document the unique aspects of working on a Color Classic in the 21st century!