Early Revision Macintosh 128K

I have been on the lookout for an original Apple Macintosh for the longest time, and one finally happened to pop up on Facebook Marketplace for the low price of $70. Well, most of the Macintosh. Some of it had rusted away as you will see in these next few photos. I was told by the seller that the Macintosh was stored in an abandoned publisher's office building since 1994, and was surrounded by mold and moisture (his words, not mine). Well, I drove 40 minutes already, so I decided to accept my fate and bought the Macintosh. It came with the keyboard, external floppy drive, and the mouse.

Immediately the mouse stood out to me because it was not an actual "Macintosh" mouse, rather, it was an Apple mouse designed for the Apple II line of machines. Apparently they are compatible with Macintoshes, so it will stay. This mouse also was rusted to the mouse port on the motherboard, so I needed to get pliers to twist the screw terminals to finally get it removed from the computer.

The keyboard had yellowed, as did the rest of the computer. The space bar was the worst out of the entire set, it is made from ABS plastic, which is different from the what the rest of the keys are made from. Surpringly the Macintosh rear shell had yellowed more than the front faceplate, I am not sure why since these two pieces appear to be made of the same plastic.

This is what I initially saw when I opened the computer. The entire chasis had rusted and fused to the motherboard. I decided that the bottom chasis was beyond saving and bent the rust off to remove the motherboard. I think I might get Tetanus from this; afterall, it was stored in a moldy and moist environment most of its life. I decided to use a replacement chasis instead of reusing the original you see here and threw it out.

Here you can see the extent of the rust. It spans the entire chasis, no metal was spared. Heatsinks, CRT implosion band, any and all IC legs had corroded to varying degrees. The floppy drive bracket however seemed salvagable so I placed it in a bin of vinegar to dissolve the rust.

This is what the chasis looked like when I had everything taken apart.

Strangely, I found this inside the floppy drive. It had been inside that floppy drive for probably 30+ years.

I decided to start retrobriting these yellowed plastics, a controversial move as I understand the yellowing will return eventually and the plastic's structual integrity may worsen, but I would rather look at something that isn't a disgusting hue of yellow than to have it yellow years later. Here is what the plastics looked like after a few hours in the sun. I placed the rear housing in a plastic tub along with the keyboard shell and spacebar.

I put 6 bottles of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide into the tub and let it sit over the duration of a few days. The weather was in the mid 80's and was sunny most of the time, perfect for retrobriting. Unfortunately, the bleaching did not go as planned.

While the parts were outside getting a tan, I decided to turn my attention to the motherboard. I forgot to take a picture of the board as I had found it and only realized this after I had covered it in dish soap, so that is what you see here. I put it under the water and gave it a good bath with a toothbrush. It came out very nicely and I think it will have a chance of working again.

It is worth noting this is not an original 128k motherboard and is instead a 512k upgrade. I think it is still fairly early given the 1984 manufacture date on all the ICs, but finding this was still a bit disheartning to see since the only reason I had bought this Macintosh was to have an original Macintosh 128k.

This is what the rear IO looked like before I had replaced the connectors. The DB9/DB15 connectors are all riveted into the motherboard so I had to drill them all out. Unforunately one of the RC filters for the IO (mouse port) was damaged during this drilling so I have ordered replacements on eBay.

The connectors were completely hosed, and rust had gotten into most of the entire assembly. Immediately into the garbage with these guys.

This is what the motherboard looked like after I had cleaned most of the rust, and replaced the sockets. It was great timing too, since just the other weekend I had visited my friends in the Twin Cities and checked out a shop called Ax-Man. This place was an electronic surplus store and had affordable pricing on all their stuff. I bought these two blue machine holed sockets for 79c each. Absolutely amazing find.

This motherboard is close to being able to power on. The rust is mostly removed, but you can still spot some on the serial number sticker, and I want to leave that on for weird collector's reasons. Even though I don't actually need the RC filter component for the motherboard to function as long as I do not use the mouse, I can power this on, but I still do want to wait for everything to be installed before applying power.

The keyboard was another story, I had not expected much rust to be on the metal and saw some rust peaking underneath the peeling paint. Once I got the key switches all desoldered however, I began to notice the extent of the rusting.

The rust was more or less all over the keyboard. Water must've pooled in the center of the metal bracket for a long time since that was where most of the rust had formed. I decided I would have to take a wire wheel to the metal bracket and repainted the metal with black spray paint. Here is what the keyboard looked like after I had it mostly assembled:

The keyboard now makes the iconic "ping" sound that these old Macintoshes are known for. Prior, the keyboard wouldn't make any sound (the rust acted like a dampening material for the echo). Now I don't have to wash my hands everytime I touch this keyboard.

The Macintosh is all finished as far as cosmetic repairs are concerned. I have everything installed in this picture; the analog board, logic board, and CRT, all inside the housing. I ommitted the analog board repairs from this section as I think the repairs I did for that fall more in line with electrical. But that's all for the cosmetics! If you recall, the entire machine was rusted through, here is what the inside looks like now:

I bought a new chasis, there was no saving the original chasis. I also spray painted the floppy drive chasis with a zinc coating spray paint. It came out matte and is different comapared to the main chasis, but it is conductive and provides a solid ground.

The mouse I retrobrighted in the same manner as the keyboard and it also came out quite terrible, see my post about it here. The external floppy drive was surprisingly in good shape and did not require much cleaning.

Thanks for reading!