"Market" for old macs?

[Tony Duell]

> It's VERY important to be careful inside the Mac once the cover is
> off.  It's extremely easy to snap the glass nipple on the CRT and
> ruin it.  Apple in their infinite wisdom put a circuit board on
> the back of the neck to act as a 'torque amplifier' for this
> purpose.  Just bumping the board wrong can let all the 'magic
> vacuum' out of your CRT.

There are good eleetronic reasons for mounting the video output stage 
close to the CRT base (basically to reduce the capacitance of the 
connections to the CRT cathode). You'll find most high resolution 
monitors have a PCB hung on the back of the CRT.

The Mac+, etc, just has a socket connector on the back of the CRT, all 
the circuitry is on the analogue board (PSU and monitor circuity 
basically). But there are connectors you have to unplug to remoe the 
digital board (processor, mrmory, etc) which are a tight fit and so 
positions that if you're pulling on them and they come loose suddenly, 
you will hit the CRT neck. And yes, people (not me this time...) have 
cracked CRTs doing just that.

> 
> But since the compact Mac was expressly designed to NOT be user
> servicible, that meets the requirements of the time.

I am not going to enter into another flameware about Apple 
designs....Suffice it to say, both mechanically and electronically, they 
are well down my list.

-tony