Power-free PRAM
Dead and buried, but strangely nostalgic
The 4400 I have to work with is in pretty good condition, but before I have so much as plugged it in, I know with 100% certainty that it will not start. This is because these Macs use a modified version of the IBM AT power supply, which has some extra signal lines to allow a ‘soft-on’ power switch. These are ubiquitous nowadays, but in the mid-1990s most PCs were turned on with a power switch that physically connected the mains power, rather than sensing the momentary press of a button. Modern ATX supplies will provide 5V to the motherboard, even when the computer is off, so it can detect the On button being pressed, but the AT one can’t do that. This means that the power button must run off the PRAM battery and, after 20 years, that battery is definitely dead.
Industry standard
And not just dead but buried too, because the 4400’s battery is hidden underneath the CD-ROM drive. To get to it, I needed to halfway dismantle the Mac. It was a strangely nostalgic procedure. I’ve been dismantling a lot of old Macs recently, but this didn’t feel anything like that. The rush of nostalgia I felt was for dismantling old PCs, which I haven’t really done for over a decade. There’s no such thing as a classic PC, unless you want to go all the way back to the original IBM XT. Every desktop built since then is just the same ugly collection of components, in either a beige case that is more boring than the cardboard box it came in, or a black case that resembles the air intake of an SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. This 4400 belongs firmly to the former category, and once you have the lid off, there is almost nothing to suggest that you are looking at an Apple computer. I pulled out the PCI riser card, disconnected the IDE drive cables and lifted out the hard disk, floppy drive and CD-ROM – all of which would have looked completely at home You can use the Scrapbook app to catalogue your collection of low-res clip art.
Once you have the lid off, there’s nothing to suggest that you’re looking at an Apple computer
in a Compaq PC from the same era. Underneath was the first non-standard component I had seen: a 4.5V battery held onto the motherboard with a Velcro pad.
My multimeter read less than a fifth of a volt remaining on this battery, which I think certainly qualifies as flat. Fortunately the three 1.5V cells were very well sealed in a plastic housing, so no electrolytes had leaked out to corrode the motherboard. I snipped off the connector and soldered the lead onto an ordinary battery holder designed for four AA batteries, then shorted out the last set of contacts, so that it would work with just three batteries, to give me the voltage I needed. I taped the battery holder to the side of the hard disk where I could see it, so I will be reminded to change the batteries again, when this Mac refuses to start up in another five years from now.
Vital signs
The mounting plate that holds the floppy and CD-ROM drives was surprisingly hard to wrestle back into place. I had to line up about a dozen different metal lugs and flanges, with the corresponding slots in the chassis and the front bezel. Even when everything was aligned, it still needed a fair amount of force, so I spent half an hour fruitlessly searching for an obstruction that wasn’t there. Eventually, I shoved it home and plugged all the ribbon cables back in. Then I hooked up a CRT monitor with a DB-15 video cable and pressed the on button. Success! The chime of the firmware and chitter of the hard disk confirmed that we had a live, working Power Mac 4400.
But to what end? This machine runs Mac OS 8.6, just like the smaller and marginally less ugly Performa 6200 I resurrected two months ago, and I don’t think it can do anything extra. Even if I upgrade the hardware as far as it will go (see the How To above), there’s no software installed. Without an Ethernet card, I will have to install everything from second-hand CD-ROMs. This might be the first functioning Mac I don’t want to keep!