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?

Question

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??

Answer 1

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.