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Sunday I decided to see if my IIci, purchased for $3600 in December of 1991, was still among the living. I had last booted up maybe 2 years ago, at which time it fired up nicely. This time it was completely unresponsive.
It was a sad moment. I suspect that the power supply is defunct, given the total lack of response.
At one time, I actually had a spare power supply for it sitting around here, but I am pretty sure that I tossed it out in a feeble attempt at clutter reduction.
Would I be out of my mind to try to find another power supply? The plucky little machine has 80MB of RAM, a very sizable amount for a machine of that vintage. It also has an ethernet card and a (found in a curbside IIci) Radius graphics card.
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If you're serious about clutter reduction. Do NOT try to resurrect it. Let it go... it's had a long, hard run and served you well. If you wish, post it's carcass next Monday (Arrrrrr..) or on LEMSwap.
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What were you thinking of using it for? Personally, unless I was a collector or had a specific use for it, I would give it a respectful buriall/disposal. Do you have a monitor for it? I remember the days when getting a non-Apple display to work was a job in itself, with all of the db15->vga dip switch adapters.
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RIP lil' IIci. You lived a good life.
80MB of RAM? Wow! That was some $$ back in 1991.
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80MB wow. My PowerMac 6100 from 1994 only had 72MB.
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interesting. I have IIci somewhere from my dad, along with a Quadra 700 that was in use not that long ago. i have always thought the same as you, that it will boot up whenever called upon. now your experience makes me wonder. ah, well, what the hell are we all keeping these things for? (well, other than they originally cost as much as some autos)
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It might be that little battery.
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The main reason to keep it going is that it has (I think) the only floppy drive in the household that can still read double-density diskettes and I still have a few things around on DDs that I'd like to salvage so that I can throw away the disks. And of course, it has sentimental value: my first computer and all that.
It shipped with a 120MB hard drive and 9MB of RAM. I put in the four 16MB SIMMs for the heck of it about 8 years ago: got them very cheap on eBay. If I had put in that kind of memory in 1991, it probably would have doubled the cost of the computer. It certainly would have been far beyond my means.
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I've still got mine. Over the years I added an 33 MHz accelerator card that I, in turn, clock-boosted to 41 MHz, increased storage from the primary 500 MB to 756 MB by hacking in a second internal HD, added a fast video card and an ethernet card. What a beast!
I haven't fired it up for several years. I fear it may have succumbed to the same fate as yours, ka jowct...