4 ms·

In the mid 80's I was the head of the CS student chapter. We ran the computer rooms for the science faculty. We had a room with about 20 Mac 128k. I do not know

In the mid 80's I was the head of the CS student chapter. We ran the computer rooms for the science faculty. We had a room with about 20 Mac 128k. I do not know where Apple sourced their capacitors from, but these were not A-tier. A Mac going up in a puff of white smoke was a weekly occurrence. We had a few in reserve just to cycle them in while they were out to Apple for repair. P.S. still my favorite Mac of all time was the IIcx. That one coupled with the 'full page display' was a dream.

fredoralive 2y ago
With things like the Mac 128k, reliability issues may partly be down to Steve Job’s dislike of cooling fans.
- m463 2y ago
  To be honest, cooling fans never get the attention they deserve and end up whiney or buzzy. That said, apple did a really good job with mac pro cooling fans where the shroud spun with the blades. I think it did better than the the best PC cooling fans like noctua.
  - Melatonic 2y ago
    I always built PCs with the largest diameter fans possible - not sure why so many things come with tiny fans. Loads more airflow with less noise and even if they do spin up fast the noise they make is much more pleasant.
- MBCook 2y ago
  I was just thinking of the Apple III the other day. If I remember, jobs had them not include a cooling fan. As it would heat up and cool down the chips in the motherboard would work their way out of the socket. So one of the official solutions to try if you were having issues would be to drop it a couple of inches to try and get the chips to re-seat inside. Crazy.
yetihehe 2y ago
On the other side, we had intern at our (very small) company and he used his own mac. One time he had to debug a mains-powered device. He decided that he will try connecting it to both mains AND programming dongle without separating transformer. He fried the dongle (it literally exploded, plastic lid banging on desk in sudddenly silent office is the most memorable thing), the company provided monitor and device, but somehow his private mac mini survived all this while being in the middle.
- jdbdbcjd 2y ago
  That sounds fishy, even if the debugged device directly interfaced mains, the Mac doesn't. And even if it did, how high would the probability be that both machines were on different circuits with phases so much out of sync that it would matter? Unless I misunderstood your story
  - yetihehe 2y ago
    That device was a cheap wifi power plug, had cheap unisolated power supply, it was never intended to have user accessible electrical parts sticking out, so no need for isolation. In such cases device has common ground with ac voltage. I don't know all specifics, but NEVER connect any single terminal of 220V plug to your computer ground (usb ground in this case). When it's properly grounded, most devices will survive this. But somehow monitor connected to that mac didn't survive it. And several milliseconds of full 220V before circuit breaker reacted, made very thin traces in debugger pretty much vaporise and explode.
    - nuancebydefault 2y ago
      If i remember correctly, a lot of power supplies of cheap electronics have AC-coupled the low voltage side with the mains side. There's no physical wire, just a capacitor. You can often feel the AC when touching the 'safe' side of the adaptor.
      - amluto 2y ago
sneak 2y ago
IIcx was my first computer! I still have mine.

fredoralive 2y ago

With things like the Mac 128k, reliability issues may partly be down to Steve Job’s dislike of cooling fans.

m463 2y ago
To be honest, cooling fans never get the attention they deserve and end up whiney or buzzy. That said, apple did a really good job with mac pro cooling fans where the shroud spun with the blades. I think it did better than the the best PC cooling fans like noctua.
- Melatonic 2y ago
  I always built PCs with the largest diameter fans possible - not sure why so many things come with tiny fans. Loads more airflow with less noise and even if they do spin up fast the noise they make is much more pleasant.
MBCook 2y ago
I was just thinking of the Apple III the other day. If I remember, jobs had them not include a cooling fan. As it would heat up and cool down the chips in the motherboard would work their way out of the socket. So one of the official solutions to try if you were having issues would be to drop it a couple of inches to try and get the chips to re-seat inside. Crazy.

yetihehe 2y ago

On the other side, we had intern at our (very small) company and he used his own mac. One time he had to debug a mains-powered device. He decided that he will try connecting it to both mains AND programming dongle without separating transformer. He fried the dongle (it literally exploded, plastic lid banging on desk in sudddenly silent office is the most memorable thing), the company provided monitor and device, but somehow his private mac mini survived all this while being in the middle.

jdbdbcjd 2y ago
That sounds fishy, even if the debugged device directly interfaced mains, the Mac doesn't. And even if it did, how high would the probability be that both machines were on different circuits with phases so much out of sync that it would matter? Unless I misunderstood your story
- yetihehe 2y ago
  That device was a cheap wifi power plug, had cheap unisolated power supply, it was never intended to have user accessible electrical parts sticking out, so no need for isolation. In such cases device has common ground with ac voltage. I don't know all specifics, but NEVER connect any single terminal of 220V plug to your computer ground (usb ground in this case). When it's properly grounded, most devices will survive this. But somehow monitor connected to that mac didn't survive it. And several milliseconds of full 220V before circuit breaker reacted, made very thin traces in debugger pretty much vaporise and explode.
  - nuancebydefault 2y ago
    If i remember correctly, a lot of power supplies of cheap electronics have AC-coupled the low voltage side with the mains side. There's no physical wire, just a capacitor. You can often feel the AC when touching the 'safe' side of the adaptor.
    - amluto 2y ago

sneak 2y ago

IIcx was my first computer! I still have mine.