Regarding the yellowing: stumbled upon this a few months ago and had no idea you can reverse it back to white in many cases. Might not be worth it for this case, but interesting nonetheless!
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Value of 1996 Power Mac 7300/200?
- Thread starter rwh63
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Retro brighting is a great way to restore yellowed plastics back to, or at least close to, the original color. I have performed it on several of my older systems. My first attempt, an Apple Iic, went very well. The system looks brand new and has retained its brand new look (I bought this system to try my hand at retro brighting).
Unfortunately there can be issues with doing so. I did so on a IIgs case and it came out marbled. I've tried the creme method (works well on very yellowed plastics) and the clear developer (seems to be less likely to marble). I definitely like being able to restore a yellowed system to its former glory.
what's the best way to wipe the drive? or should i just remove the HD (would that affect value)?
interesting. i would probably let the next owner be responsible for that. best to keep it original (untreated).
I just hook the drive up to a Linux system and use dd to write zeros across the entire drive. However this requires a Linux system with the appropriate drive interface. Easy with SATA drives but one needs a SCSI card for drives of this vintage Macintosh.
if it was me, i would consider it a negative that some process was applied to it. i expect the pc will appeal to a buyer who wants to restore it themselves. to me its like an antique, leave it as is.
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As said, writing zeroes over it once will do it. Yanking the drive is obviously the safest way but if I were a collector I’d prefer getting the original hard drive along with the machine.
It all depends on the prospective buyer. IMO it's not unique enough to be a collectable where retro brighting would devalue it.
I did watch a YouTube video where the individual gave his reasons to avoid retro brighting his Apple IIc system. To each their own.
I'd love to buy some older Macs (probably Power Mac G3/G4s), upgrade them (RAM, HDD/SSDs, video) & resell on eBay, but I doubt that there's much of a market for them.
not thinking about it. is there a for sale section? this thread is just sharing info on this machine to those who may be interested or entertained.
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Personally, I would prefer the drive still have data, just in case there's any unarchived software still on it. However, I do see the privacy concerns in that, so maybe just make a backup and comb through it?
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Should this machine have the ability to write to cd? I wanted to save some things before wiping the drive. Don’t make me resort to a floppy!
The stock optical drive is a CD-ROM, so... no. You could try networking it with another Mac, or temporarily hooking up the hard drive to another Mac to save the data you want to preserve.
