Projects

Macintosh 128k Take 2 - February 28, 2025

This is my second Macintosh 128k, but I purchased this one because it is more original than my first one. This machine has a 400k internal floppy drive (low density, single sided), wheras my other one had an 800k drive (upgraded). The floppy drive had some problems, mainly a failed hall effect sensor located in the most inconvenient part of the drive, right under the motor. I had to purchase the obscure sensors from a random place on Ebay, tear down the drive to the bare minimum, and dismantle part of the motor housing to get to the sensors. I was able to sucessfully desolder the old sensors and replace them with the new ones from Ebay, and after that, the drive works perfectly! It used to only spin sometimes, and when it did spin, it was incredibly unreliable. That is because the sensors are needed to regulate the speed of the motor properly, and with one or more failed, it was no longer able to do that. With the floppy drive working, the next issue is to find why the analog board is not allowing audio to pass through to the speaker properly. This machine is waiting in line to get a full restoration (new capacitors and other maintenance done), but in the meantime, at least it has a working disk drive. Updated 11/06/2025