Woah, you have one of these too? Cool! This is called the "HyperDrive" mod (as the controller PCB declares), sold by General Computer Corporation back in the day for around $2800 (almost as much as the Mac itself!). I believe they sold 5, 10, and 20 MB configurations; like yours, mine has the 20 MB drive installed, and a friend of mine has a 10 MB system which I covered in a video about his Apple collection. Interesting that yours doesn't have any stickers on it, mine has a "HyperDrive" logo on the front near the Apple logo and a warranty sticker on the back right next to the original Macintosh sticker. They're quite the bear to disassemble, as you found - I also had to bend the chassis to remove the logic board, and the hard drive isn't very easy to take out either. I'm still working on getting mine running properly - the original drive was stone dead, and even after freeing the platter/stepper motor it wouldn't seek correctly. After a bit of investigative work, though, I found out that mine uses the same MiniScribe drive as used in the original Mac SE except with an MFM controller board - after a PCB swap, I got a working drive! Unfortunately, it only occasionally spins up when connected to the HyperDrive supply, so I assume some capacitors are reaching the end of their lives. I'll definitely let you know if it works after the recap and might even make a video on it or something like that. The strange booting issue you show makes me think the power supply's got some weak caps and isn't providing enough power to the Mac as the hard drive is drawing so much as it spins up. I'm going to go the "capacitor" route, but I could get you a more firm answer when I dive into resurrecting mine. :)

@nickwallette6201

5 жыл бұрын

Never a bad idea to recap, but I think Adrian's right about power sequencing. That switching supply probably has a power-good delay. The drive didn't start spinning up until the Mac was already running.

And absolutely don’t revert this. An MFM HDD in a 512? Such a unique (and again, era correct) upgrade. That controller card should be studied. Imagine being able to reverse engineer it with modern components and then an SD or CF card? Sweet!

@macpb2892

5 жыл бұрын

it's the hyperdrive upgrade, it was very commun on 128kb and 512kb mac at this time. Today they are very rare because all drive dies long ago.

@brianv2871

5 жыл бұрын

Yeah, sadly being MFM kinda rules out the SD/CF "cheap" upgrade path. I'm not sure there is enough demand to put a hard drive in these older systems, and while you could do the MFM hyperdrive option, like Mac PB says, most of those drives are long since dead so you'd need a modern MFM solution but with the demand being so low the prices on those devices are between $200-300. At those prices, most people would just use a Floppy EMU.

@macpb2892

5 жыл бұрын

@@brianv2871 for modern collector there is no need to upgrade Mac 512kb... it's better to have original upgrade for history or the original machine but not a modern upgrade. Mac 128 and 512 are not so usable since the memory is to small, they are really for collection and demo. The Mac Plus is a better option if you want to have powerfull upgrade, it support 4mb of ram and the SCSI + system 6 allow you to have more fun.

@mrlurchAU

5 жыл бұрын

Brian Veditz and given how much software a) can run on 512k, and b) you’d actually want to; a FDD emulator emulating a HD20 would probably do just fine.

@brianv2871

5 жыл бұрын

@@mrlurchAU Yeah, definitely. When I was fixing my Mac 512k and Mac + a few months back, Adrian brought me a regular boot disk and a paint boot disk and once I got it all working, I booted up to that and played with it for few seconds until I declared 'Okay, I'm bored now'. :) Unlike most other vintage systems, you can't really make disks for it from a PC and I don't have any 'tweener' macs, so really the Floppy EMU is the only realistic way of using software on these machines... Plus, those Mac floppy drives are almost as flaky as an IBM M2 keyboard, that even when you do get it working, it'll likely die again a few weeks later. :)

Definitively make it a supermac! Don't revert it back!

@shankthebat8654

5 жыл бұрын

Upgrade this bad boy as much as you can! It's already been heavily modded, why stop now!

@StarkRG

5 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I'm with the leave it as it is crowd. It's not an awful mod, though it might be nice to figure out a better way to mount the logic board.

@tarstarkusz

5 жыл бұрын

@StarkRG It's very neat and professionally done. I did this kind of stuff back in the day and I say keep it like it is.

Please, don't revert it! Make it work with the hard drive. These old mods are super cool!

@jazzius

3 жыл бұрын

I would agree, but what I think he should of done is to remove the old mfm drive PSU, fan, etc, and to replace the MFM drive PSU with a new and smaller one.

@Plingowo

4 ай бұрын

yesh

The mods are really old too, so it would seem silly to make it just another stock machine rather than keep it with period mods.

Wikipedia says that Hyperdrive hard disk cost $2795 US$ at the time (roughly $6500 in today's dollars!!!). Please back up those Hyperdrive volumes and all their contents -- if you have a BMOW Floppy Emu, you can connect it to the floppy port, and it will emulate an Apple HD20 hard disk over the Mac's floppy port -- that's the easiest way I can think of to back up 20MB off of this machine. Worth getting one if you don't have one yet -- awesome device. Please keep this machine as-is also -- this upgrade is awesome. Love to see what is on those drives - this is like a time capsule! Best wishes.

@NaoPb

5 жыл бұрын

Yes, and maybe upload that hyperdrive testing utilities to internet archive or something, if it's not online already.

@valdisblack1541

5 жыл бұрын

$6.5K for an HDD --- OMFG who was the owner of this MAC???

@tarstarkusz

5 жыл бұрын

NO! This machine should be back the way it was with this upgrade. It is a very neat job, the hard disk has lasted 35 years, it'll be fine.

@valdisblack1541

5 жыл бұрын

​@@adriansdigitalbasement this is fabulous

@tarstarkusz

5 жыл бұрын

+Electronics... What is so important about the hard disk data? I'm sure he is going to back it up, but really, what is the point? I seriously doubt there is one of a kind software on the machine that needs to be archived.

MFM/RLL drives last forever, but I would still make a backup.

@sugaryhull9688

5 жыл бұрын

Agreed. He should make a DD image of the drive

@ZXRulezzz

5 жыл бұрын

@@sugaryhull9688 Does dd for m68k Macintosh exist? Because I don't know any simple way to attach MFM drive to modern PC. Maybe older PC and ISA controller card would do, but it has to have same hardware and formatting, otherwise it won't work.

@laharl2k

5 жыл бұрын

ZXRulezzz There are a few linux distros that can boot with as little as 12mb of ram with a gui, im sure it could boot to console with only 1mb so any 386/486 machine should work for this task. The problem would be how to get the data out, maybe serial port over to another machine? Not sure if newer machines with isa ports would recognice such older hardware.

@jussapitka6041

5 жыл бұрын

@@laharl2k Would an AT or XT be able to run somethig like that? They could recognise the drive and use an XTIDE to get the files to a modern computer.

@Alexis_du_60

5 жыл бұрын

Agreed, they just don't like sitting unpowered for long...

Don't make it stock, please. Somebody put a lot of effort into that back in the day

@FennecTECH

3 жыл бұрын

You should take it further. Try to get more ram. A faster CPU. Make this fucker as crazy as you can!

I think you should re-assemble it and try to make it work as it was (with HD). These sorts of mods and changes are part of the history of the computer and should be left unless they can't be made to function. Part of the intresting history of older computers is seeing how people modded them and upgraded them. You might be able to add a second switch or a switch with a few positions to allow the small power supply to power up before the main board. IE you flip the switch to a first position.. wait a few seconds.. then flip it all the way up.

I used to own a 512k we bought at a yard sale in the early 2000’s. I used it off and on up until I moved out of my parents house. It didn’t have any sort of hard drive with it just an external disk drive. I knew hard drive options existed but I only thought external options were available. My heart melted to see this machine boot off an internal hard drive that looked like it may have been installed as an extra option for a customer when sold new. I’d say definitely keep it this way and put it back together. This is a rare find and seeing this really made my day, thank you!

Keep it as-is, as you mentioned, those are "era correct" mods :)

Keep it and back up the old HDD

Keep the hard drive. That is so cool that it still works! My Compaq Deskpro 286’s hard drive is long dead... A retro mod like that is so cool. Definitely keep it! Update: Thanks for 20 Likes!

That fan is exactly what you suspect. It's a brushless motor using an external controller. I have seen them in old Rohde&Schwarz test equipment. To your question: Leave it in, but make it a little less crappy in execution. The mounting bracket for the HDD and everything is fine, but the mains wiring is .. crazy.

12:10 I love the sound that hard drive makes as it starts up. It should be the startup sound to a computer

Another amazing video. Thanks Adrian!

Definitely keep it as-is! Watching you take this beast apart was an adventure unto itself.

The craziness is what makes it! Amazing find. Keep this the way it is

hyperdrive were one of the few companies back in the day providing this this upgrade with the blessing of apple keeping the warranty intact, keep it

I had a Mac 512K, with a _2 MB RAM and SCSI port_ upgrade. Thanks for the memories.

I love your videos, Adrian. Thanks for cheering me up.

@Skaera75b

5 жыл бұрын

ALSO, definitely make a SuperMac!

Keep the hard drive in this mac and great video as always

Keep the hard drive ! You keep finding all the unique macs

Only just discovered your channel and I am loving your old Macintosh discoveries! Reminds me when I have discovered accelerator cards hiding in modest Macintosh SEs before :-)

Wow, Adrian, this was so cool to see! I couldn't believe it when it came to life!

Keep it as it is! Got to love these old school mods.

KEEP THE HYPERDRIVE! That's totally badass, this is a 1337 Mac.

THANK YOU! You saved my Applied Engineering Vulcan 40MB MFM Western Digital drive! I have one of these in my original owner Apple //e and when I brought it out of 30 year storage the drive would not spin up. I bought exactly the lubricant that you showed/mentioned and to my delight the drive spun up after putting it on an external power supply. Amazing!

Leave this thing the way it is! Its really cool and it tells a cool story!

You are stumbling upon some fun computer adventures and it makes me jelly but at the same time I am learning more about old systems and I love it 😊

Yup. We called it “sticktion” in our lab back in 1994. We had so many MFMs we needed to repair, and used the same method to lubricate bearings with some graphite grease.

@Alexis_du_60

5 жыл бұрын

Ah yes the stiction problem, give [the stuck hdd] a good ol' whack and it should free up!

Keep it. What a cool upgrade!

Looking forward to seeing it up and running that supermac magic. Great video!!

Put the craziness back together, don't go back to stock

Keep the crazy MFM internal drive! That seems so wild that it would be a crime to undo it.

Leave it a the way it is, adding upgrades to these machines in that era was common due to the speed of development. My dad had a Macintosh II back in about 1989, it came originally with a 40MB HD and 4MB of RAM, that was increased to 8MB of RAM later. In about 1991 the logic board was swapped out for the IIx version, and had dual 1.44MB floppy drives added, as well as upping the RAM to 16MB, it had a special graphics card fitted for the monitor which was a 21" if I remember rightly. Also had the apple scanner and laser writer II printer. it was used for desktop publishing at the time, it was quite an investment ! I sold that machine for just NZ$50 about 15 years ago, and it was still working! I still have the full set of System 7.0 / 7.1 in its original box that was used with that machine,

Keep it as is! It's so rare to see late 1980s Macs running off of an HDD... in an era when it was mainly floppy boot.

That drive setup is cool as hell! I love period aftermarket mods like this. Keep it together! Also look into doing the caps on the analog board, it may be a little slow to warm up with old caps.

This is amazing. I have never seen that kind of setup.

Definitely keep the drive! That's an amazing mod!

Leave it as is.

The old Mac lover in me says “revert it back” but I like the way you tinker (improve) things so I say keep as you got it! New subscriber and I love your vids!

@bruwin

5 жыл бұрын

Yeah, but think of it this way. It's not terribly difficult to find stock 512Ks even though they are getting on in years. But finding ones modded back in the day, with those mods still working? It's kinda nice to preserve that history as well.

Classic! Keep it with the hard drive.

I just gasped at 14:29 because you just said you weren't gonna touch the supply and then it cut to you holding it. Took a sec to realize it was unplugged. lol

@Adrian Black The Mac 512k was originally available with both types of floppy drives. The higher capacity drive was an optional upgrade. About the HDD, like the Mac128, that is an authentic upgrade. Keep it! It's a very cool aspect of that computer! The first boot corruption problem is actually the way those upgrades worked BITD. The early upgrades required the reset be pressed manually because the HDD needed time to spin up. Not all of the HDD upgrades did that. Later versions paused the system boot long enough to account for the spin up time. This quirk is actually authentic as well. Do your thing fixing it up, but keep it as is. It'll be a wonderful show-case and conversation piece!

Dude, Keep the drive on that mac! That mac is awesome!

This is really cool. Leave it the way it is.

For goodness sake man, KEEP IT LIKE THAT! Period correct mods are really freaking cool!

This was such a fascinating video! I have a pretty large collection of macs and I always find it amazing when there is something in there that is out of the ordinary. Image, a hard drive in a classic mac? SO cool. If I were you, I would put it back together (after you fix that power supply glitch) and run it with the hard drive. It would seem somebody put an awful lot of work into it. I'm thinking it's a rare animal! GREAT video!

You should absolutely put that back the way it was! It is time period correct and it's a very neat job and it makes the machine so much more useful.

Definitely leave it as it is. That MFM drive in a Mac is really cool!

12:36 Love the harmonizing

It’s too unique to put back to stock. What a gem, keep it as is.

Keep it as is!

Hearing that MFM drive spin up brought back so many memories.

can't go back now man, let the mac-beast live

Keep the crazy, it's awesome! These period mods are amazing, before things just fit together like little legos.

Keep it as is. The curiosity factor with the MFM drive makes it more interesting. If this was a commonly known drop-in feature, I'd think differently.

Original 512 had the 400k drive. But the 512kE and 512kED had the upgraded 128k ROM and could then take an 800k drive. I *believe* upgrading the rom on a standard 512 can be done. But if this has a HDD in it, it could be a custom rom? Might be worth backing up if that’s the case.

Yeah, Keep it like it is, That's a jewel of a find

Hi Adrian, I am a fellow Oregonian. The old power supply that doesn't start up is usually the Electrolylic capacitors that are dried up, replacing them usually fixes the power up problem. Sometimes there is a power good line that needs to be enabled to start up the supply. Their are many Tech channels that are showing how to fix these power supplies, IE Paul Carlson , (Mr Carlsons Lab), 12voltvids, w2aew, Jim Lindenas, and others. Good luck from Ray Burke

Wow, what a find. That has to be a pretty rare mod. I would for sure keep it as these mods back then where pretty unique.

gotta keep it the way it is, this is screeming old school mod and those are always fun to find. If anything I would say keep working on the power supply to get it (or another one) that can provide voltage fast enough to have it boot properly without a reset. Super fun video and great find.

keep it as is and what cool find can't wait to get my mac Se/30 up and running

keeping it as it and repair as needed to run correctly is my vote... Cheers

This is just too cool to be put back to stock!! Plus it'd be lots of fun getting it all working smoothly , powering stuff on time and such ! :)

Make it work! That's so cool!

That mac has such a unique story and amazing one-off add-ons. Definitely keep it and see if maybe you could even take it a step farther if you're feeling brave. Maybe even give the case a different look, style or color to match the craziness inside.

Wow what a find! Twice I have tried buy Mac 512k's and have always had issues with dodgy sellers...and here you have two of them! What a surprise to see this HDD setup! I am guessing that this was a very very early modification to address the lack of an internal HDD in the Mac 512k. You did a great job getting it apart and changing the power supply. I would just leave it the way it is currently and just enjoy it whilst the MFM HDD is still functional.After that fails then put it back to stock.

Keep the hard drive!

Sweet T-Shirt Adrian! Gave this a thumbs up 3 seconds in, just because of the T-shirt. I'm sure the project is cool too.

This is an awesome demonstration of the kinds of ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking hardware engineers gave us back in the day! I'd say get it back together with the MFM drive intact, and bonus if you can get the original PSU working. I also echo what others have said about capturing the data off the drive so that the drivers and whatnot can be preserved for posterity (and anyone else who might run across a machine with this upgrade)

Don’t revert! Loved the video

Put it all back together! There's plenty of stock machines out there, this is a living snapshot of a machine that was well used and loved.

keeeeepppp ittttt this is so cool and there’s already enough stock 512ks around haha

Keep the drive, it's part of the machines history.

That is awesome. Worth keeping around just because it’s so uncommon, I think. Plus it sounds like you know your way around MFM drives, so you can keep it going.

Keep it as-is! Even though an MFM drive on a platform that was historically known to use SCSI for a very long time seems weird, I'd still keep it as-is. Consider it like the Mac equivalent to the IBM 5160 XT.

@Fifury161

5 жыл бұрын

You are thinking of the Mac Plus - earlier all-in-ones didn't have SCSI. There was an unofficial weird external hard drive that plugged into the external floppy port though...

@THEtechknight

4 жыл бұрын

Except it wasnt unofficial. it was called the Apple HD20. But you needed the enhanced ROMs to natively boot it. Otherwise you had to have a boot disk to load the driver before it transferred control over to the hard drive.

Leave it as is, though you should get another PSU for the hard drive. The upgrade is period correct. 512K Macs came with 800K drives, and you need to check the ROMs to see if it is HFS (Hierarchical File System) or MFS (Macintosh File System). Since it is using a rare System 5, it looks to me to be HFS. HyperDrive used to make external SCSI Drives for the Plus and SE / SE\30s and even had an internal SCSI HD for the Mac Plus long ago as well as rebanding internal SCSI drives for the SE / SE\30 and Mac II Line. Look at the side of the board, there should be steps on one side so you can pull the board out a tiny bit for the steps to line up and then open it like a swinging door. You should close it the same way. If anything, check out the Analog Board and clean up/replace any bad solder you find and check the connectors for burn marks.

General Computer Corporation made a US$2,795 Hyperdrive hard drive for the Mac, they also made a 2 meg upgrade. You have a period correct computer for the more wealthier of users.

Definetely keep ot as is. It's a unique, period correct upgrade.

Keep it as it is, a rare example of what was available, also see if you can image/backup that drive, never know when you find an old piece of software that disks/downloads dont exist anymore

No leave this like it is, this is an excellent MOD and was really cool. you have one that you put back original, now have this one as a mod

I just love these little computers. I would love to own one just to play some old games.

Keep it as it is. It's a unique computer with history from a different era. There are plenty of stock but only one as that one.

"My Pappy said son you're gonna drive me to drinkin' if you don't stop drivin' that hotrod.... Macintosh." Once again, a vintage hotrod is cool... even if it's a bit inelegant and not ready for "Mac-o-Rama." It still hauls ass in a retro kinda way.

Keep the crazyness. Great video.

Disclaimer: Don't take this the wrong way! It's something we're _all_ guilty of. I just want to clear up any fog left lingering when it comes to the seemingly endless acronyms and definitions used in the world of computing. Many of you probably already know this and perhaps even the author himself, however the habit has become so pervasive that it's often never given a thought. For years, and perhaps not really incorrectly you often hear older ST-506/ST-412 drives being referred to by the encoding method that they use. Almost every ST-506/ST-412 that you run into uses RLL (Run Length-Limited) with either FM or MFM encoding schemes. MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation) is merely a particular type of encoding scheme as opposed to FM (Frequency Modulation) where there are differences in density. P.S. Don't remove the hard disk modification! Very cool.

Stiction is definitely a commonly used term within the industry. I don't know if it was official, but it was certainly taught in the training sessions for those building hard drives at IBM.

I had an Amiga 2000HD that had an MFM/RLL 20MB hard drive in it and when that died, I remember buying a Seagate 85MB - 5 1/4" Hard drive for $475 which was in the 90's was a lot and its still a lot today for a hard drive :)

Those exposed CRTs scare the bejeebus out of me.

Keep it as is. The modifications are part of its history.

Keep as is!

Keep it way it is

I seen one of these in a school recently, it had similar issues starting up, they were going to bin it - might pop along Monday and see if its wanting a new home. I think keep yours as is, and also backup the data for historic value.

This is so cool!

That is very cool! Back it up, and keep it how it is. You might want to take a hint from the previous owner and add a fan though.. I think there were third party add-on ones that mounted on the outside of the case somewhere for some of the early macs, but maybe that was more SE era.. i don't recall for sure.

Good test method. ..just try to get this Mac 512 work again. .. I love this machine. I used to have one 1984 I guess ..thanks V much .....👍

Put the crazy back together. Mods FTW!

Add a separate power switch to power the Hard Drive first then power the Mac, and put it all back together as found with the new power supply! Someone worked hard to set it up this way!