Can I get the battery replaced on my Original Macintosh 128K?

mcmicky wrote:

I hope you are correct. I thought the first Macintosh computers were a closed system. Thank you for your response, I will follow up.

There are many articles and videos showing the disassembly of the original 128K Macs, but I did not post them here due to the shock risk of CRT displays. This is something an electronic technician would be well aware of, but may not be appropriate to post on the forum.

Hi,

A Macintosh 128K used a 4.5 V #523 alkaline clock battery (accessible from the outside).

Macintosh 128K: Technical Specifications

It may be difficult to find this kind of battery today (various suggested workarounds have appeared on the web).

Also, an old Macintosh computer as such may or may not run (well) without a battery in place. However, compatible software may have difficulties to accept or show a correct date/weekday after 2019.

You should see a battery door with a latch on the back of the Macintosh computer.

Maybe someone from LA will be able to provide a location for you. I suppose there would be many independent electronic shops that would be willing to tackle that for you. There are many videos and articles on the web that explain how to do that with the warning of the high voltage CRT, which would not be a problem for most electronic shops. The battery is about $13 on Amazon and the time to complete should only take about 30-60 minutes.

Mac Jim ID wrote:

Maybe someone from LA will be able to provide a location for you. I suppose there would be many independent electronic shops that would be willing to tackle that for you. There are many videos and articles on the web that explain how to do that with the warning of the high voltage CRT, which would not be a problem for most electronic shops. The battery is about $13 on Amazon and the time to complete should only take about 30-60 minutes.

There is no need to disassemble a 128K Mac to replace the battery – or to pay a technician to replace the battery for you.

That machine has a plastic battery hatch on the back that resembles the battery hatches on numerous consumer electronics devices. All you do is open the cover, remove the old battery, and put in a new one of the right type. The time to complete should be well under 2 minutes once you have the correct replacement battery in hand.

mcmicky wrote:

I hope you are correct. I thought the first Macintosh computers were a closed system. Thank you for your response, I will follow up.

They were closed as far as any upgrades to RAM or drives. The clock battery was explicitly designed to be user-accessible.

In later Macs, Apple changed that, and you had to open up the machine to get to the clock battery. The difficulty of that varied from machine to machine.