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Comment by varispeed | Hacker News Reader

What is the likelihood of Apple dropping an army of lawyers on this? These PCBs are probably copyrighted. My understanding is that schematics are fair game as long as they don't look the same in terms of component placement (but connections can be identical), but a PCB can be protected the same way as a painting?

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You cannot copyright circuit designs in the US. Those fall under a separate sui generis rights regime for "maskwork" that has a far shorter lifespan than creative works do - about 10 years. (God, I wish software had followed this path, instead of the bodge job that "just copyright software" got us.) Patents might be an issue, but those expire after 20 years in the US. It's almost certain that no unexpired patents or mask work rights cover these old PCB or chip designs.

In order to actually make a copyright claim on a reproduction PCB, you have to argue that the PCB reproduces a copyrighted work, such as the contents of a Mask ROM. However, if you can avoid needing to reproduce those ROMs, then you're free and clear of copyright issues. For example, you could just provide a ROM chip socket matching the original board, or ship a flash chip with a workalike ROM (if that is an option by the time SCOTUS decides Oracle v. Google).

The only avenues left would be trademark or trade secret protection. Apple loves sticking their logo all over replacement iPhone parts, and for whatever reason Chinese clone part manufacturers continue doing so. The Shenzhen markets like that, even though foreign part importers beg them to stop doing that. Presumably, however, anyone cloning an SE/30 board in the US would know to not stick Apple logos on the thing. Trade secret protection claims would also be rather spurious as the machine in question is very public, you didn't sign an agreement to keep the machine's design confidential, and reverse engineering is legally protected within the guidelines I stated above.

Thank you

Apple hasn't nuked stuff like the Mac ROM-inator that is obviously infringing and being sold for money so presumably they don't care.

Accord8mg to the site this board is four layers. The original board was six. Presumably it’s different.

I vaguely had the impression that the original boards tended to fail over the years due to the capacitors.

I'm wondering, if this replacement board doesn't have them, how was that done?

I suspect the solution is that 1) you're going to assemble the new board with a fresh set of capacitors, resetting any wear/degradation clock, and 2) modern capacitors are likely improved from the early-generation surface-mount ones in many old Macs.

I'm very hardware illiterate - I meant that I didn't see any of the big cylindrical ones and wondered if there is some story behind why they're not needed.

Like this: http://pc-restorer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/SE30-bad-c...

The caps in your linked photo are 47μF. The orange squares in the jumper wire photo are 47μF tantalum capacitors, that won't leak. You don't need those big cylindrical ones for such low capacitances anymore.

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