Later on this week, I'll be going to buy a Mac I've wanted for years: a Color Classic! These are quite possibly the coolest little desktop Macs ever, very expandable, well designed and look great.

I've always wanted one of these machines - in stock configuration they are rubbish, but the accept a straight swap of a LC575 motherboard, bringing it up to a 68040 machine capable or running OS 8.1 nicely.

Once you mess around with the inside, other motherboards can be installed, such as an LC630 board (what I intend to do, I've a TV tuner etc), to a 6500 300Mhz mobo (Gothikon is preparing his like this). Such later mobos can accept a G3 upgrade card, making running OS X a possibility.

I'll keep posting pics of when it arrives, and my upgrades as I go along. Might even consider a few case mods as good measure.

Here is a picture of a rare green transparent prototype Color Classic:

Did I read that right? A 6500 300Mhz mainboard inside a Classic?

Aye - and with G3 accelerators... well, nothing wrong with a 500mhz color classic.

Even less wrong with cube innards inside a color classic case, and a dual 1.7ghz upgrade inside that...

=)

dana

Hahaha, a Dual 1.7GHz machine inside a Classic.. now we're getting into crazy mod territory :P

I have no issues with crazy .

*drives off in a twin-V8 mini*

dana

While you can upgrade them with LC575, etc- I'm not terribly keen about butchering the back plate for the upgraded motherboard.

The best "stock" upgrade you can get is the LC550 motherboard, which is an 030 (and was the guts for the rare CCII). No IDE though.

If I had two I might consider modding one of them however.

Some interesting links for you decryption and others

Just found this one, using an iMac revision A --> D board and the existing screen! Might go for this mod, it sounds the easiest.

iMac Color Classic

Color Classic (Cube) G4

Color Classic with Voodoo 3!

Color Classic G3 500 + pics

JB

The one I'm buying is already upgraded to a LC575 IIRC - and hacking up an old 575 backplate isn't a hard thing to do. I don't believe this has been hacked to accept 640 x 480 output - but that one is definately on the cards.

JB

Yeah you can hack a lc 575 backplate up - but most of the ones I've seen just look wrong.

The best solution I've seen is someone who cut the top off a CC backplate and joined it with the bottom of a lc575 plate. But that requires a fair bit of dexterity and a spare CC backplate.

Looks like the Colour Class might be the most modded Mac there is.

With installing Mac OS X on it, I have seen a mod on it but I wondering if Mac OS X would run on that screen. I think OS X has a minimum of like 640 x 480.

And, byrd, didn't that green/lime colour classic went on eBay for like $3000 USD because it was a prototype?

You can hack the screen to output a 640 x 480 resolution, instead of 512 x 384. Apparently all OS X system installers output to 800 x 600, so you need to use another screen. But in reality it would only be for the coolness factor, an external monitor would be essential if you ever ran OS X on such a machine.

The LC630 board I have is a DOS compatible one - imagine seeing Windows 98 coming up on the Classic

How is your LC475 going, by the way Phillip?

JB

I remember seeing a SE/30 converted to a PC. Looked pretty cool.

The LC475 is just sitting there ATM . I need to get the Apple Monitor I lent to my friend (his PC monitor died) to use the LC. The insides seem cool to look at though. But the Powerbook that you gave me with the LC is great. Got an hard drive for it and its great. I actually use a graphing calculator on it to do my maths homework. (It reminded me why floppy disks sucks so much :P)

Ewww, Windows 98. Seriously, eww. If you are going to do it, stick with Win 95, its less crash-prone, and will run better on the ol' 486. Plus, with the Internet Explorer Desktop Enhancements, you can still get a Win 98 style desktop.

Got the Color Classic last night Will post pics when I have a chance. Such a cool little machine, the screen is great (and unmodded, looking forward to doing that after Christmas), it's in excellent condition too.

The bloke threw in a 70cm Torx screwdriver as well, will be very handy for cracking open Classic Macs.

Specs so far: LC575 mobo, 68LC040 33Mhz CPU, 68MB RAM/2GB SCSI HD, PDS ethernet card.

Specs I'll upgrade to: LC630 mobo, full 40Mhz 68040 CPU, 52MB ish of RAM, 5GB notebook hard disk, Commslot ethernet card, TV tuner, oh and DOS compatible 586 board Plan on it being the ultimate 68K Mac.

JB

Yesterday Gothikon and I modded my Color Classic to output 640 x 480 resolution The 9" Sony Trinitron screen is quite capable of this, it's just that the analog board of the Color Classic prefers 512 x 384.

Basically to perform this mod you need to follow the instructions from this site. Hacking the analog board was fairly straightforward, we used a No. 15 scalpel and Stanley knife to cut the tracks of the PCB, along with popping off a resistor, then soldering some pins.

Thankfully it all works first go

So now, the specs are:
- LC575 mobo with 'full' 33Mhz 040
- 68MB RAM/2GB SCSI HD
- PDS network card
- VGA 640 x 480 monitor @ 60Hz (it even offers 800 x 600 @ 57Hz, but wouldn't dare try that)

Now that the monitor is running at a standard resolution, all games run without complaints. It's now also ready for me to hack in a LC630 motherboard, which has a PC compatibility card + TV tuner. But that'll take a couple more days.

Attached is a pic of the working machine with a fresh install of OS 8.1

JB