The Color Classic is the BEST WORST Mac Ever
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- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2024
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Today we're cracking open the best WORST compact Mac that Apple ever released - the COLOR CLASSIC! Can we upgrade it beyond all recognition, or will I absolutely ruin it? Let's find out!
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🍎 JDW Color Classic CRT Adjustment Video: • Macintosh Color Classi...
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#MARCHintosh2022 #Macintosh #ColorClassic
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How is this comment from 1d ago??
@@ThePeter567 I use YT's scheduling feature to make videos go live, so I upload a day or two in advance
Hey Sean, at 15:22, I hope that green wire is routed around the back of the flyback transformer. I wouldn't let it touch the anode wire. Not knowing what the tolerance is of insulation surrounding those wires, I wouldn't want to risk a chance of high voltage arcing between the ground and the anode wire. It's not pretty; I've seen what happens.
For the screen geometry, it looked rotated. So you could rotate the deflection coil yoke by a couple of degrees. Carefully.
Fun fact: If AppleTalk is enabled, and there are no other AppleTalk devices connected, your Mac may delay startup by up to 60 seconds waiting for a response that will never come. Always turn AppleTalk off unless you're using it.
"waiting for a response that will never come" - poor sad little old mac
All alone on the desolate LAN, it's multicast packets go unheard and unanswered, it slowly loses hope in silence and accepts it's fate as the last of its kind.
@@XeonProductions ...after 60 seconds. :)
@@XeonProductions Poor sad mac
The MacBook Air 11" of classic AIO Macs
Except that the MBA 11 is actually somewhat usable, especially in the 8gb RAM version.
I'm still rocking a 2015 11" MBA and I've never had any issues. 🤷♂️ Had it for four or five years now and I love it now as much as I did when I first got it.
@@MaverickTheDemonWolf I’d feel the same way if it wasn’t for the eternal darkness that overcame mine for mystery reasons.
I'm somehow reminded of the iMac that had a CPU from a MacBook Air. (edit: that I think was a model made for the education market)
I’ve always thought it was ugly. The design just looks off to me. The actual Classic looks beautiful from the front.
I feel the opposite. One of my favorite Mac designs of all time. It looks so sleek to me
They do look a little better in person.
Agreed, the Classic is literally the cutest computer ever made. The Color Classic, or so much.
What I love about vids like this is getting to see these old apples in action, since I never got you really use a large number of these machines in use when they were new.
The best worst Macintosh ever made, covered by the best Macintosh RUclips channel ever made
That external apple scsi cd-rom drive was one of the few reliable things apple made back in that day; it will boot almost any mac model from the 80s and 90s provided you had the right cd version, albeit slowly, but sure it can revive any classic macos vintage computer
"Borderline unplayable" is, as I heard it at the time, the experience of the Wolfenstein Mac port. I wouldn't blame the Color Classic for that.
It does have its bugs unfortunately. Meanwhile the x86 version can run on a 286.
21:25 "it's not the worst....oh no, it's the worst" got a good laugh out of me
The CC was basically an LC II in a pretty, compact AIO box, so it had the same 16MHz '030 stuck with a 16-bit bus and 10MB RAM ceiling (which were what really hobbled these things). The CC II (and LC 550) was an LC III+ in a compact AIO box and it was actually pretty good: 33MHz, 72-pin SIMMs for 32+MB of RAM, with a full 32-bit bus. I've actually done all of the various CC mods over the years and the Mystic is arguably the best as far as performance improvement vs. ease of installation. The PowerCC with the Alchemy and Gazelle-based boards are fast, for sure, but it's a ton of work with a hacksaw/rotary tool and rewiring of the harness (including installation of a 3.3v regulator in most cases), and if you want to use a PCI card you'll have to rig something up to physically support it. And for a G3 upgrade you'll have to hack up the case even further, cutting out part of the chassis below the floppy drive. Unlike the Mystic, these also require the HiRes upgrade; they don't support the native 512x384 resolution.
Also that Seagate hard drive is really good, assuming it's still properly functional. It's way better than the OE drive and way faster than a stock CC deserves (and probably shouldn't have been used because of increased power draw and heat production).
That resolution limitation as well as the slow specs made this updgrade a must! Plus I had an LC-550 that had a Video-TV card in it. It's bigger BUT It sure gave the same vibes as this little ditty!
I haven't watched your channel in a few months and i was surprised to see your face!
Keep up the great work!
Haha thanks!
Welcome to the Color Classic Mystic club! I did the Mystic upgrade on my Color Classic during MARCHintosh 2021. You'll love this machine for sure!
I used this as a teenager at college. It put me off computer aided design. There's a phrase for you. I went on to use photographic print processes. Then I stopped because computers weren't awful anymore, and let me record music and do DTP for earnings. I wouldn't have paid for it. This bloody computer is lionised by people for the simple reason that it informed plastic tones and plastic structure for even less imaginative people
Computers were usually better than this even when it was new. Early 90s apple had a habit of making things they shouldn't and then dumping them in schools.
To fix the tilt you need to adjust the yoke - that is the big electromagnet on the middle of the CRT neck. You should be able to loosen the bolt/nut on the back of it slightly and then carefully rotate it. As with the other geometry adjustments, you have to do this while it is on in order to see what you are doing.
Great video!
Thanks!
Feature Creep Alert: Looks like they've got RaSCSI's networking stack going in the mainline release and are working on making it also appear as one of those weird ass SCSI graphics things. Could, eventually, be handy for those of us with SE/30's hamstrung by the low resolution.
Also yeah... the colour classic is basically an SE/30 but worse in every way other than a low res colour display.
What like the Lapis Powerbase SCSI? That would be amazing, I could finally stop looking for the right SE/30 PDS card to fit my SE/30 monster.
@@MistahMatzah Radius Power View seems to be the one they're going after. It seems to need you to compile a dev build from akula's github and obviously have the drivers installed.
But yeah seems like a onestop upgrade for the SE/30 at this point. Gets you drives, networking and graphics... no need to hunt for the super rare PDS cards.
Now how do we get a PiStorm in there.... I feel the need for SPEED.
nope, the colour classic is more like a compact mac version of the lcii
@@windowsxpnt2347 So... kinda crappier in almost every appriciable way and deliberatley hamstrung for no, apparently, good reason.
Or
Worse than an SE/30 in everyway bar the colour display.
@@sarahts21 no more like, "hey we need a new cheap education mac" "ok just put an lcii inside a compact mac case, give it a colour screen and sell it" remember that the reason why the colour classic had the weird screen resolution was so that it could support the apple iie card properly
color modern; make it with a POWERPC chip and give to Sean
PPC Mystic? ;) I remember wanting to build one of those in college (when the 7100 was modern).
It was funny that I was calling out LC 575 as you said it.
Looking forward to seeing it done. Closest I ever got was acquiring the LC 575 mobo. Then I got a 7100 with a G3 card and just didn't have a need anymore. :p
Cant deny I love the "Hank Hill is confronted by an awkward situation outside his comfort level" laughs.
14:07 As a Gen Z, I would like to respectfully correct you as it is mostly referred to as a "Big Oof".
I remember drooling over these when they first came out, the compact form with the color screen, then I realized how much garbage they are. :(
I was lucky to find a Performa 575, similar form factor with bigger screen, more RAM, and a CD-ROM drive.
@@drewzero1 I have an LC575, great machine and Trinitron CRT. Can't go wrong!
Your channel is so underrated. Love the content!
Apparently there’s a way you can mod the CRT to make it 640x480
The geometry issue needs to be adjusted by the magnets on the tube. Adrian has done some great videos about that. Thanks for your great videos!
Was it the yoke that just needed a little adjustment?
On the color tubes most stuff like pincushion is actually done with pots on the back of the analog board. Only tilt and convergence can be adjusted on the yoke for the color tubes.
@@kylejones8392 It looked like it need rotation
@@julianbarron5293 yup, you just loosen the yoke and turn it.
I remember being 10 and seeing stacks of these at CompUSA. My dad just got us a Performa 550 (from Sears, LOL), upgraded from our IIgs. What a time. We didn't have a lot growing up but my dad always made sure we were one step ahead of whatever they had at school.
I recently used a 3rd Gen Ipod Classic to install MacOSX onto an iMac G4 that would take burned DVDs, that's how i celebrated Marchintosh
That’s wild
Thank you for the shoutout, kind sir!
Recognized that green Ground Lug wire immediately, despite only being an SE/SE30 aficionado. Heart skipped a beat. Good lord, what a lucky machine.
yes
Loving the Doctor Who shirt you're rocking! Didn't know you were a fellow Whovian.
When I was in primary school in the late 80s (or early 90s), there was a special fundraiser by one of the supermarket chains to buy Mac Classic computers for schools and if you collected enough receipts you'd get free Macs for your school. We did a great job, I think we got 4 or 5 in the end... from a school of 600 students. I used to play wolfenstein 3d and Marathon on my old Mac IIsi... it was ridiculously hard to play because it was so choppy but it worked! lol
Some of the geometry may be related to the alignment of the deflection yolk, as well as the magnetic adjustment rings around the CRT neck... The rotation skew is easily fixed by loosening the retaining screw for the yolk and rotating it.
Amazing how slow it is compared to say an Amiga with similar CPU.
As a kid, yes, we do call that a big stupid.
I disagree… the entire line of Centris was way worse… hobbled almost on purpose, and the step up to Quadra was super expensive, although the main upgrade was a Floating point processor… something so integral to processors today, that no one knows the significance today of not having one.
"This is for g-r-o-u-n-d."
Action Retro's dad voice 😅
😂
The color classic is one of my favorite Macs ever. I love the design so much. I wish Apple had released the mystic
I found a Color Classic locally too! The owner couldn't get it to power on, so I ran the motherboard through a quick cycle in the dishwasher and it's alive again!
Recap ASAP!
I enjoyed my time with the MacYak yesterday. I got some advice in the chat from many users. It was surreal having all these Mac enthusiasts who I am familiar with being accessible together
Apple loved to hobble machines around that time. My family's first Macintosh was an LC. It came with a similarly limited 512x384 monitor, a 40 MB hard drive and 4 megs of RAM. That was the affordable option for us at the time, apparently. At least it could run HyperCard, some simple games (such as Hellcats) and Microsoft Works, so we had fun and got work done, but it sure was slow and limited.
I always wondered why the 512x384 resolution mode existed in Mac OS. I accidentally selected it once on my Performa 6116CD and it interlaced my screen into a nearly unreadable mess. I had to look at screenshots to figure out what to click on to get back into the control panel to change it back!
If you are still curious, I recall 512x384 was mainly for use with the Apple //e card which plugged into the LC (and CC's) PDS slot. Apple intended the LCs to replace the Apple II's in schools (which probably had heavy investments of Apple II software), the //e card meant to be a bridge of sorts
@@naryasece Interesting! I had been looking for a ][e card for my LC but they're all a bit pricey (especially with the y-cable!)
Turning on Virtual Memory, and setting it to double the physical RAM should allow you to run MacBench 4. If not, then upgrading to System 7.6.1 or 8 should do it.
My mom had one of these back in the 90s! I will never forgive her for selling it at that garage sale.
Great video. Question: What camera and shutter speed did you use to completely eliminate the horizontal scan line? I can get my Panasonic GH5 to smash it down to a very thin white line (which I prefer over black), but I cannot fine tune the shutter speed enough even with Synchro Scan to completely eliminate it like you did. There are times in my videos when you see it completely gone, but that's only because I had a static image on screen and edited out the scan line in FCPX. Thanks!
Thank you kindly! On my GH4, a setting of 60 gives an almost imperceptible white line on the stock CC. 60.1 gives a more perceptible black one.
@@ActionRetro Thank you for confirming. On my GH5, I am not able to get as much fine control with Shutter Angle (I normally use 180°) as with regular Seconds Divisions shutter speed. But even when I try 60.0 or 60.1, my white lines are still noticeable. Must be a GH4 to GH5 difference. All said, if we had finer control like 60.05 instead of just 60.1, 60.2, etc., we could eliminate those horizontal lines completely. Again, thank you!
Back in the late 90s/early2000s I started fixing up old macs as a hobby. Parts were dirt cheap back then and you could find good examples of pretty much any old mac you wanted. I did the CCIII "mystic" mod to a CC. It worked great, got System 7.6 running on it - Lc 575 board, modified the analog board using the 'mystic mod'. It ran great, actually, wish I still had the computer, but I ended up selling it to buy other old macs. One I bought in 2004 was a 1999 B&W Mac that I maxed out and upgraded to 10.2, actually got used as my main PC when a Windows computer I had died on me. It worked pretty good.
I thought the 'Mystic' part was referring to the option of booting off an internal system, and have no need for a boot drive.
You could have access to the network with a clean system and do copying to the floppy drive.
We had a Macintosh user group that had a room full of classics setup like that.
I really don't get why people gut the LC 575 in order to do the Mystic upgrade. You lose the CD-ROM, the stereo speakers, the bigger, higher-res monitor. Yeah, you can dork with the analog board on the classic to get 640x480 out of the monitor, but you don't need to bother with the 575. If I had a live Classic and a dead LC 575, and I wanted one live system, then maybe I'd do it. But these days, even unmolested Classics run for a ton of money, and LC 575 donors are even more expensive. You can easily drop a couple grand on a project like this, and all you have to show for it is a Mac that can barely run DOOM.
I think all of us at one time or another have forgotten to connect that darn ground clip to ground. Great video, Sean!
Color not-so Classic.
I continue to apologise for this whole month theme thing 😂
😂
That reminds of the speed my old, beloved A1200 used to run MacOS on emulation with an 030 card lol.
I played SimCity 2000 on SNES too as a kid (didn't even know it was on the system, I was still hooked to plain SNES SimCity)
It was definitely a slideshow as the city got larger but I always liked how it had really detailed in-game newspaper articles, seasons (sortof) and even weather!
I always played on the free maps and had no idea to place water pumps NEAR water so my cities were constantly deserts :P
I had one at university. The design and detailing of the case was a joy. Word 5.1 was ok.
Cool video. I love re-examining old hardware like this.
I always wanted one. Now I'm looking at building something similar with a 7" LED and a Pi.
To straighten that image, you need to physically turn the CRT yoke
i didnt "watch" The Best WORST Macintosh Ever Made - the Color Classic! I sat my white ass down and LISTENED
Is it a 16Mhz/32Mhz BUS speed, or is it 16-bit/32-bit wide data bus? I thought it was bit width, not speed, that influenced the Color Classic. In the same way the original LC was also limited. The CC was basically the LC. Both machines have the same boot chime, and both have a 10MB limit. A limit I believe set by the bit width of the bus, 16-bit. Or have I been wrong all these years remembering it this way? The CC2/LC550 was essentially a LC3 board, which makes it over twice as fast.
I have a working Color Classic with a bad HDD and a cracked bezel I was going to offer you, but then I saw this video. Lol 🤣
I'm about to get my own Macintosh Color Classic. I plan on giving it Mystic Mod myself.
I live in Canada. I had a CCII in my grade 4 class in elementary school. I remember I fought and refused to share my computer time when I got to use the Mac CCII. I even convinced the other kids in my class to trade the Mac with me -- Them getting the Unisys Icon computer terminals. The Mac was networked on Appletalk and was connected to a McJanet Server. It blew the Icon workstations out of the water. BUT!!!!!!! even back then it was slow AF, especially when I ran games off the ext SCSI CD-ROM drive. SLOW SLOW SLOW. It ran Kidworks and Kidpix ok.
Looking forward to part II.
I’m so excited to see this come to life! I bought one of these brand new, and used while I was in college. I even used it to create my wedding agendas, it worked wonderfully and my wedding agendas looked professionally printed. Eventually install an accelerator which bumped the clock speed but it was still slow by Mac. standards of the day. I love the look and wish it could be modified to run today’s software and brows the internet. If they made new Mac like this I would buy it again such a cool box. 😎
Raaahhh… the control strip… I miss that stuff so much…
I'm not a big Apple collector (I own a few Apple computers, but most of them were obtained out of convenience) but I'd still love to own a Color Classic at some point.
This video definitely left me wanting for more. Can't wait for the upgrade series.
Great video! Sure brings back memories. :-D About the Wolfenstein 3D performance - as a kid I used to play Wolfenstein 3D on my parents’ LCII a lot, which is also a 16 MHz 68030 on a 16 mhz bus with a 80 MB harddrive. But it ran Wolfenstein just fine in 320x240 - I played it a lot (both with 4 MB RAM and later 10 MB). The Wolfenstein performance in this video looks crazy slow.
So something is definitely killing the performance. I always kept our LCII at System 7.1 however because 7.5.5 and 7.6 were way too heavy for that machine, and I spent lots of time optimising it by disabling unnecessary extensions etc.. So I’d be curious to see it running on a clean 7.1 or 7.0.1. It should run fine in 320x240.
Also I saw that you had the Stuffit Deluxe menubar item running, so I can’t help but think that Stuffit SpaceSaver could also be the culprit causing the bad performance, or maybe some other extensions?
Can’t wait for the next Marchintosh videos! :-)
Ah yeah, I'm going to put it down to 7.1 I think
I think that black stuff you wiped from the inside of the case is soot. I guess it is a diesel powered Mac. 🤣
Sure is as slow as a diesel. #RollinCoal
Great video. It reminds me of one of my first retro restoration attempts. Mate gave me a Colour Classic II in 2001. I was pretty green back then, mostly because it was my first Apple product and I did not know what I was doing. Needless to say it ended up dying and I left it out next to the trash. I still get nightmares of walking past it for weeks in the rain. I still feel guilty.
Really enjoyed this video! I never knew about the Mystic, so this is cool. Also, your tshirt rocks
I love how old Macs were all designed for people with 20/20 vision.
Don't forget to mod it to 640x480 while you've got the soldering iron out.
I have a couple of CCs. They were so SLOW in stock configuration. It is really sad. I got the LC575 mobos and loaded them up. No 640x480 hack though.
Such a disappointment seeing the dismal Wolfenstein 3D performance. I was playing Doom II at 320x240 on my Mac IIfx (80MB of RAM, and some sort of RasterOps 32 bit graphics card) back in the day (the 1990s) and it was playable with a respectable 20fps. Yet I do appreciate your efforts with these videos which cover the best and worst of the myriad of PPC machines Apple produced.
very respectable!
That thing had 7.5.5 on it? Ouch. I think 7.1 is the highest you'd want to run on an un-upgraded Color Classic, no wonder that thing was slow. :P
Than screen tilt on the righthand corner is BETTER! Pfft, heck no. Hoping that screen issue gets properly fixed up in the future.
I think the yolk was shifted messing up the geometry
With MacBench, click on the application icon, press Cmd-i change minimum ram to 7000 kB and try launching it again. It isn't like modern computers, memory allocation is more... manual. Sometimes you can reduce how much you give it and the program doesn't mind. Other times it does.
Or startup without extensions (shift while starting) to maximise available RAM :). Remember to quit everything else. You can even write an applescript that quits the finder then launches MacBench for maximum memory saving :)
Oh thanks!!
Avoiding the fact I was like #666, but DUDE!!!! Electricity hurts man! you had my cringing when you talked about adjusting the image. Back in 2000ish, when I was in college I was in Computer Service Technician Year 1 and there was a CRT that if someone wanted it they had to fix it. Same kinna issue. However the teacher asked how I was doing and I stood up, with my other hand hitting the screen, completing a circuit and tossing me into the wall behind me. I learned two things that day.. 1 they make plastic screw drivers for a reason AND the difference between "Mega-Hurts" and "Kila-Hurts" and they're in the wrong bloody order. I have to this day, my right hand has shaking and twitching issues. Learn from my mistake and get yourself some plastic screwdrivers.
Only other time I've had bad electrical issues was a badly grounded E-Machine. Took a wooden broom to separate me from it. Don't do that either.
I badly want a CC but they call for stupid money these days. It doesnt even have to have a mainboard, i just want the boardless chassis.
Reckon you could replace the floppy drive with a Zip drive?
Looks like the yoke is rotated a few degrees clockwise.
Billie from green day doing tech builds lol love it
Do I dare say it will end up having a PPC CPU? XD
Hey AR, what vacuum is that? I’ve been wanting a small spaces one and the Bissel I have sucks.
The 030 is pretty brutal. I've got a Presto 040 Color Classic and performance is marginal.
This along with the Mac Cube were ideas that were awesome in concept but executed poorly. Also, awfully nostalgic is best kind of nostalgic.
Lol wolfenstein, my only real memory of it was a dude who kept installing it on a computer that belonged to my buddy Hank’s dad, the copy had a virus and the computer was always down.
I would like to see a modded 2003 emac modded for video input to hook up a console cause the screen is beautiful.
Thank god apple pioneered hardware electrical failsafes for personal computers. Had that been a 386, you would've been screwed.
What is that dimple above the display? Looks like a webcam but cannot realistically be one?
I loved my Color Classic! I used it all through college
F1 can switch 4 tires in the time it takes to click on one menu, then just click on the next one :P But Wolfenstein wasn't so bad, reminded me on how Cyberpunk 2077 did run on the OG Xbox/Ps4 :D
Love the Mac stuff and the Doctor Who Tee shirt
Finally I get to see your arm waving from the other direction.
Unbelievably annoying, I had to stop watching 😞
"Thonk" indeed, sir!
Great video! Love these “pushing it to the limits” episodes.
Wolfenstein running worse than a 286 PC. Not entirely surprising as the Mac port doesn't have Carmack's x86 assembly. Still I would expect an 030 to do better . Makes me wonder if Apple considered the display's resolution to be about the limit they could expect for a colour machine with that cpu
Careful Action Retro you might unleash a cursed mac 2.0
Oh, I'm trying!
@@ActionRetro ah a "Let's get dangerous" mind set I love it 👍
Can't wait to see what your plans are! I've always wanted to watch someone create a Mystic