Crusty, the Macintosh SE
Crusty was found in a scrapper's yard, having sat out in the rain for quite some time. It was rescued from that yard, and was pretty damaged internally, rusted and not great. It was neither worth repairing, nor had anything to salvage to repair other machines, minus a stick of RAM. Hard drive was seized up, motherboard wasn't great, etc.
Surprisingly, it didn't take much to get it to run 2 years ago at VCF East in 2021. Seeing as there was nothing to lose, the owner then buried in the dirt for a year, excavating it just before VCF East in 2022. It was brought to the show, cleaned off enough to see what was going on, and miraculously, it ran again! Following the event, it was then unceremoniously kicked into a lake where it sat for 8 months, before being extracted prior to the first freeze that could have destroyed the picture tube. It sat in a barn until VCF East this year.
What you see here is how it arrived at the show, followed by the crowd of folks who gathered to watch this chaotic repair attempt by a friend of the owner. It was cleaned slightly, then signed by a number of youtubers, before an attempted diagnostic and repair was attempted. Sadly, the power supply was beyond saving. A donor supply was attached, but it too was broken.
Crusty will return at VCF Midwest later this year, to be repaired at the show with the right replacement parts.
