I have an old Macintosh LC that recently went down. I am located in the Portsmouth, NH area.
Anyone know where I can get this repaired or have the data transferred??
Macintosh LC-OTHER, Other OS
How much $$ do you care to spend to transfer the data on the LC's 40 or 80 MB hard drive? The original LC is now 21 years-old and has little if any market value (I know - I have an LC I and an LC III), so professional repair will easily exceed that. It's considered "obsolete" by Apple's authorized repair shops, so parts are not available. Was it starting up normally before it stopped working, and if so, were the date & time always correct after it had been disconnected from an electrical outlet? If not and if startups have been hit or miss for a while, your LC undoubtedly needs a new PRAM battery installed. It's a 3.6-volt ½AA lithium battery and is installed in a black plastic holder w/retainer cover clipped over it on the LC's motherboard. The battery can be purchased at battery specialty retailers for about $8 or less, as well as from a number of online merchants. If you don't mind paying 2-3 times the value of the battery, Radio Shack carries it. If you need directions for installing the battery, post back. It's the least expensive thing to try and a new battery has brought many a dead Mac back from the dead. As for the internal hard drive, it could be removed and installed in a slightly newer, pre-G3 Power Mac having an internal SCSI bus. If there are any thrift stores in your area, you might find a suitable Mac for this purpose. This would involve removal of the hard drive from the LC and installation in the newer Mac, with a slight change in the LC's SCSI address jumper placement. Once installed in the newer Mac, the files could be copied. If this is more challenging than you planned on, you might check your area for a Mac User Group, where you might be able to take your LC and have someone transfer the files for you. After the files have been transferred to another medium, you may have problems trying to open them on a newer Mac running a newer OS version than the LC's (System 7.0, 7.1, 7.5.x, or 7.6), if the programs aren't compatible.
Jeff, thank you for such a thorough and detailed explanation on where to go from here. The main reason I need
to retrieve the data is to recover the only application on the LC. It's called Macdraft by Innovative Data Design. I have been unable to locate a simple 2D CAD application that matches this old application in simplicity and capability. Again, Jeff - THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!
Just so you know, MacDraft still exists, though the company either changed their name or passed the application on to another one.
http://www.microspot.com/products/index.htm
There are a number of other CAD programs that also might suit:
http://www.macupdate.com/find/mac/CAD
Regards.
Thanks Dave, I was not aware of that. I have just downloaded a trial version of the new MacDraft PE by Microspot. Looks very similar. Can't thank you enough!! Really appreciate your help!
pre-G3 Power Mac having an internal SCSI bus.
Just a minor correction. I know my G3 beige is capable of using a SCSI drive because it will take both SCSI and IDE drives. Of course it probably won't boot to the operating system version you had on the LC, but I used to have both IDE and SCSI drives in my G3 beige. One might even find the software may still run under System 9 that runs nicely one a beige G3. I used to run several System 7 items on my beige, and some will even still run under Classic on my G4 with OSX. You can get a beige for under $25 (maybe even free).
Do you still need your old files off the LC's SCSI disk?
I have old Macintosh LC that recently passed on, anyone know where I can get this repaired or have the data transferred into something else?
