LikesOldMacsA fun #marchintosh surprise from @csilverman 😁 what fun and thank you!!
We got to experience this unusual Mac for a few hours before (predictably) the barrel jack gave up on this 5300-based machine. HD imaging and some touch-up work on the docket! 🤞
Takeapart time! Primary goals: pull the drive to image it, and touch up the power jack.
Here's the bottom: two Phillips screws and four typical apple hex screws.
And the open-up: fortunately no interlocking plastic tabs, so it just lifted open. As expected, some delightfully well thought out jankiness.
With the paper insulator removed there are only a few visible apple items: the HD sled, display cable, and inverter board. The board on the left does a lot of work (ADB related inputs, floppy port, touchscreen magic) and the one on the right (above the CD ROM) is the main touchscreen controller.
Close ups of the two main added boards. Left is the touchscreen controller and right is the everything board as mentioned in the previous post.
The touchscreen control board has only the one ribbon cable feeding into the everything board.
The everything board takes the keyboard and trackpad ribbons in, plus a soldered connector from the sound port, and a floppy-like connector to an interconnect board with the removable media bay. The everything board then has a ribbon cable up to the display.
This is the small board that sandwiches between the floppy bay connector, the CD ROM, the everything board, and an IR transmitter. If you recall, the removable bay for Powerbooks 5300 could only accommodate a 3.5 inch device. I once tried a 3400 CD ROM module on a disassembled 5300 and it didn't work - so they are doing some magic here to get CD and floppy out of that removable bay port.
With all of that out of the way, we are down to the apple 5300 guts of the thing, plus a gorgeous custom heatsink. The power board looked ok, and the barrel jack just needed the usual resolder.
This was actually less stressful than a normal 5300 because there were no plastic tabs to dislodge. Only one broken standoff. And given the hardware and cable for the display, I'm assuming it's an active matrix 'c' model display.
The HD is fine - the most efficient way to image it was to hook it up to the Quicksilver via a cheap USB adapter. It rebuilt the desktop file, which revised the drive size from 3.7 to 1.8 gb (on a 2.1 GB drive). Imaged completely with no problems.
All back together and better than before! Powers reliably now.
The touchscreen is still wonky - it registers presses randomly and the cursor hops around / to the edges of the screen. Can't get it to calibrate since it won't register the "press here" spots. Cleaned but haven't removed it from its frame for a thorough cleaning. Any tips welcome!
Otherwise, works just like a Mac with KB and mouse! Thanks again to @csilverman
Chris Silverman 🌻@likesoldmacs Neat. I didn't fully appreciate how much custom engineering they did here. I'll be curious to see if anyone has thoughts on getting the touchscreen to work properly—maybe the problem is with the controller board.
Looks like the company (https://trollsystems.com/) does still exist, technically, although it's probably safe to assume they don't offer support for products from 30+ years ago.
@csilverman time for some LinkedIn trolling! (ha)
Also made me wonder if some of the guts were reused in the clamshell ibook touchscreen oddity - the ports for the switches look the same and after all the work on this one, doing some ADB>USB magic would have been trivial.
@likesoldmacs Yeah, I remember someone in that MacRumors printout saying that the iBook touchscreen (this device, I assume? https://vintagemacmuseum.com/the-gemini-ibook-a-mac-os-9-touchscreen-tablet-mac/) was manufactured by the same company who made the one for the Freestyle.
And it looks like the Gemini iBook was also made by Assistive Technology, so makes sense that the hardware would look pretty similar.