Upgrading a
Macintosh Classic II

The Classic II was the final variation of the black and white compact Macs. It was identical in terms of size to the original Classic but was upgraded from a 68000 CPU to a 68030. Oddly even though this is the exact same processor that was found in the SE/30 the Classic II is a much slower Mac and to make matters worse the Classic II will only support a maximum of 10MB of ram. Same limitation as the LC II even though you can install two 4MB 30 pin simms in the two slots.

As with the other compact Macs of this era access to the internal parts was through the removal of the 4 torx head screws. Two of which are recessed in the slot for the grab handle and therefore required an especially long Torx 15 screwdriver.

Aside from the name on the front of the case, you could easily tell a Classic II from the original Classic by the perforated holes for the speaker on the side of the case.

As with all compact Macs there are dangerous voltages stored in the flyback transformer! If you don't know what you are doing STOP NOW!

Another important thing to remember is to carefully unplug the board from the back of the CRT. If you don't and accidentally hit the board from the side you could snap that tiny glass piece sticking up in the middle of the tube and thus render your CRT garbage!

Before you can pull out the motherboard you must detach the SCSI and floppy ribbon cables plus the power connector from the AC board to the motherboard.

The motherboard can then be slid up and out.

The Classic and Classic II motherboards are the same form factor and therefore interchangeable.

Now for the bad news. Both of the Classic II's in my collection have bad mother boards. I suspect that the capacitors have leaked due to the thin film of material that appears to have oozed out at the base of several. I suspect that this causes the above issue with the monitor.

What you can't see in this photo is the slight discoloration around the base of all eight of these silver topped electrolytic capacitors.

To make matters worse it appears that this has caused damage to this particular IC note the green corrosion where the pins enter the body of the IC as well as the damage around the pads on the motherboard.

All of this is rather unfortunate as I really liked the look of these compact Macs.

Comments? Feel free to e-mail me at kevino@newsroom.net.