TV? Computer? YES! The Macintosh TV Restoration - iiiDIY

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The Macintosh TV was Apple's first attempt to bring full-motion broadcast video onto the Mac. Released in the fall of 1993, its striking black case was completely different than the beige 486, Pentium, and even Macintosh boxes of the day! Now we have a chance to restore one as we wrap-up #MARCHintosh!

The MacintoshTV didn't do well with the general public. It had a high price tag, very low 8MB RAM limit, an older processor, and no expansion slots at all (sound familiar?). I think it would have been totally useable as a home or school computer at the time, but it was quickly outpaced by the speed of mid-90s innovation, and had no upgradability.

But today, more than 30 years later, it's a really interesting (even usable) retro computer. The video function opens up more possible uses, and the advent of flash storage & internal wifi make this much nicer to work on today.

Because they didn't sell many units when new, the vintage supply is low and prices now steep as a somewhat rare collectors item. I was lucky enough to find one local to me being sold from an abandoned storage lot at a reasonable price. I bought it unseen and untested, so now we can salvage it! :)

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Thank you to PCBWay for sponsoring this video. You can check them out at https://www.pcbway.com/

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:46 Cleaning & Assessing
01:55 Recapping Logic Board
02:48 First Test Boot & Troubleshooting
05:15 Full Disassembly
05:59 Sponsor
06:26 Case Cleaning
06:46 Floppy Service
07:43 Repairing Caddy CD-ROM
09:20 TV Tuner Recap
10:46 Analog Board Reflow
11:01 Fan & Case Cleaning
12:26 Test Boot & New Storage
13:39 Tuner Woes
15:07 Final Test-Drive

CREDITS:

Technight's video restoring an Apple CD150:    • AppleCD 150 External CD-ROM Won't rea...  

90s music track: Dying for More (Instrumental) by Zac Nelson



#apple #MacintoshTV #Macintosh #retrocomputing #nostalgia #68k #MacTV #vintagecomputer #90s #PCBWay