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Welcome to the Vintage Macs thread, where we'll discuss, inform and solve problems about the cool and awkward computers of yesteryear. If you love dust, corrupted floppies, noisy SCSI hard-drive and floppy swapping, then this is your dream-thread. We'll try to cover most of the Glorious and Awkward era of Apple, starting with the Apple II (or ][, or //, whatever) up to pre-G3 stuff, but I guess G3 is old now so it's fine. In other words, if it's bondi blue or beige, we'll try to cover it. Especially if it has an auto-ejecting floppy drive. Why do I want to get a big, clunky, yellowed beige, relatively slow system? There are many reasons to get into the fabulous world of old Macs, here are some examples. - It's fun. - Nostalgia. - You learn a bunch of stuff. - It's kind of rewarding. - It's cheap most of the time. - A Compact Mac often makes a good conversation piece. - You love obsolete technology. - You have nothing better to do. I'm 16 years old and never saw an old Mac in my life, but my dad told me we have a "veejeeah"? monitor and playstation 2 mouse and keyboard in the garage, I'm only missing the machine RIGHT? First off, there are a few things that differs from PCs of the time. Mainly the connectors. most Macs of the time used ADB. If you didn't receive a keyboard or a mouse with your machine you have many options. Either you hunt down the "period appropriate" keyboard and mouse on eBay or you can cheap out and buy a cheap set of Apple Designed Keyboard and mouse, it won't necessarily fit but it'll work and is probably your cheapest option. Some ADB keyboards have removable cable, be sure you have it, replacement are not very expensive but it's not fun having a keyboard without a wire, a S-Video cable has the same pinout and will work. Now for the screen, as far as I know, most older Macs outputs video through a DB-15 port which is a bit different than the usual DE-15 (VGA) port. This doesn't mean you NEED an Apple monitor. While it'll look good on your desk, shipping can be a bitch if you want a matching monitor. If you find them locally they can be very cheap as most people just throw them away. If you have a VGA screen, all you need is an adapter. I don't know if there are particularities to adapter, if someone would clarify this for me, all of mine came with the machines and I never had any problem. If you have money to spare, try getting either the Apple Extended or Apple Extended II keyboard, these mechanicals keyboards are often praised as the holy grail of beige plastic input devices (among the famous IBM Model M). Wait for a deal, bought a working (albeit yellowed) one for 2$. Also, you might find some 800KB floppies labeled as 720KB, they're the same thing. Ok you sold me with your mostly satisfying selling points, I want an older Macintosh, what are my options???? There are many product ranges Apple offered, I'll try to describe them here. If someone would be interested in making banners I'd love them, all text is kind of boring and I'm the worst with graphics - The Apple II range The oldest one you could possibly get, I personally never had anything else than a IIgs, so feedback/info would be appreciated.  Here are the common models Apple II (1977) - The oldest model you can get, Woz's masterpiece. 1MHz MOS 6502 and 4KB+ of RAM. I've seen quite a bunch of them, but they didn't work. Don't really know about their reliability! Apple II Plus (1979) - Same as its predecessor but it has BASIC in a ROM instead of booting from a floppy, also it has improved graphics. Most of them came with 48KB of RAM out of the factory. Apple IIe (1983) - A cost-reduced but more powerful version. 64KB of RAM. I personally see much more of these than earlier models and you probably will, because it's the most popular model of the range. Apple IIc (1984) - A "portable" Apple II. I would call it compact instead. 128KB of RAM, otherwise identical to the IIe. Apple IIgs (1986) - "gs" stands for Graphics and Sound. The first (and only?) Apple II to feature a blazing SIXTEEN BITS CPU. Brings new features that I won't list but the most important thing is it has no built-in keyboard (fine by me) and nearly perfect backward compatibility. In my opinion this is the one you want, it'll let you play all your favorite games and it'll probably be the cheapest. Also, replaceable ADB keyboard. - The Macintosh range (aka Compact Macs) These are the cute one and mostly the ones people want, because they're quite unique, "small" and all-in-one. Many models again. Note that all the monochrome ones have the same screen resolution and size. Macintosh 128K/512K (1984) - The original (and it's upgraded brother). While these look cool (arguably, they look the cleanest and the best in my opinion). These are not really the one you want to buy, mainly because Macintosh Plus (1986) - The one Mini vMac emulates. has 1MB of RAM standard, upgradable to 4MB (you should do it). Also has a bigger ROM, enabling it to run System 6 and System 7 (but stay at System 6). It has a 800KB floppy drive, which is easier to find floppies for and has a SCSI external bus, so you can get an external hard drive (20 megabytes!!!). A cool model if you get a deal, especially if it has 4MB of RAM. Macintosh SE (1987) - SE stands for "System Expansion" meaning it has a slot for an expansion card (ethernet, etc.). It's a significant upgrade over the Plus in that it has either 2x 800KB floppy drive or 1x 800KB floppy drive and a 20MB or 40MB internal SCSI hard-drive. These are more reliable than the earlier models because they have a case fan. Earlier models didn't because Steve Jobs was still there and he hated sound of reliability or something. They later offered a version named Macintosh SE FDHD, which is the same but has a 1.44MB floppy drive. This is great because 1.44MB floppies are easier to find and also it means you have to swap less floppies. Could also be badged as Macintosh SE Superdrive. You'll often find 800k models with a third-party bracket with a hard-drive fitted in. Macintosh SE/30 (1989) - Usually the one people want, it's the most powerful compact mac (16MHz vs 8Mhz). It came with 1MB of RAM standard but can be upgraded up to 128MB (in 1989!) using 16MB SIMMs. Has a 1.44MB floppy drive. Basically, if you want only one compact mac, this is the one you want. Most of the one I see have 80MB hard-drives. Macintosh Classic (1990) - Released as a budget model (the first Mac to be under 1000$ (it was 999$)) Basically it's very similar to a Macintosh Plus but with an 1.44MB floppy drive as standard. Can have an optional 40MB hard-drive. These are quite cheap usually and would make a great first old-mac in my opinion, bonus points if you have a model with an hard-drive. Macintosh Classic II (1991) - (aka the Performa 200) The last monochrome compact mac. Uses the same 16MHz 68030 as the SE/30 and has one 1.44 floppy drive. However the memory bus was gimped from 32bit to 16bit and the memory ceiling is at 10MB. Doesn't have an expansion slot. Overall, you'd be better off with an SE or SE/30 in my opinion (or even a Classic for that matter!) The following use a color screen and are somewhat different. Wether we should classify them as compact macs is kind of a grey area, however they are definitely part of the Macintosh Range and I will list them here. Macintosh Color Classic (1993) - (aka the Performa 250) Basically an LC II in an all-in-one. Same 16MHz 68030 as the SE/30. One expansion slot. Apparently you can switch the board for something with a bit more punch. I don't know much about them. Macintosh Color Classic II (1993) - (aka the Performa 275) Not sold in the US, same as the Color Classic but with an LC 550 board. I heard good things about them, especially because of the 33Mhz 68030. - The Macintosh II Range (aka Desktop Macintosh) I never had any of these. I'll try to list the significant models. Macintosh II (1987) - The first Macintosh to support a color screen. 16MHz 68020, 1MB of RAM, expandable to 20MB and a 800KB floppy drive. Options included a 2nd 800KB floppy drive and a 20 or 40MB hard drive. Also the first "modular" Mac. Macintosh IIx (1988) - Same as above but switched the 68020 for a 16MHz 68030, came in 1MB or 4MB of RAM, expandable to 128MB, and had a 1.44MB floppy drive. Optional 40MB hard-drive. Macintosh IIcx (1989) - The c stands for "compact", basically the same as the IIx but quieter and with 3 expansion slots instead of 6. Macintosh IIci (1989) - Basically a IIcx with 25MHz 68030. 40 or 80MB hard-drive. These were quite popular, so, easy to find. Macintosh IIfx (1990) - At the time, the fastest Mac. Full size "non-compact" case, thus, 6 expansion slots. 40MHz 68030. 4MB of RAM standard, expandable to 128MB. Very interesting machines in my opinion. The pinnacle of the 68030. Probably the one you want, I do. N.B: These requires a special black SCSI terminator, which is apparently hard to come-by, just a thing to consider if you want to swap drives. Thanks to Only Shallow! Macintosh IIsi (1990) - A cheap and smaller version of the IIci with an underclocked 68030 at 20MHz. Better off with a IIci in my opinion. If you have one and want to "reclock" it at 25MHz, all you have to do is switch the crystal, google it. Macintosh IIvx (1992) - The last Macintosh II, the first Macintosh to have a CD-ROM drive! Came with either 40, 80, 160 or 400MB hard-drive. 32MHz 68030, 4MB of RAM, expandable to 68MB. Better off with a IIfx. The IIvi is a gimped version of this one, just don't buy it. Other ranges and OS part coming soon! Ok so I bought an old piece of crap, now what? Have fun with it! Write stuff, mess around. Here are some websites I use for documentation and other stuff. Wikipedia LowEndMac - A very good resource, includes specs and usage tips, guides, etc. EveryMac - Specs and comparisons. Macintosh Garden - Amazing source of software and support for older macs. You can find some system software on there. Older Apple software downloads - Apple's own site is a goldmine for old system software(up to 7.5.5!) and various other stuff. apple-history - More of an historical information source, interesting none-the-less! System 7 Today - A good source of software and information for you System 7 users, and on that note... Thanks to Only Shallow! System 6 Heaven - Amazing source of software for System 6, especially compact macs Home Page of Goomba - An excellent resource for system software, boot disks, enablers, and lots of other stuff, but many of the links are broken these days. Thanks to Only Shallow! - Tips Use this particular page on LowEndMac to determine which system software you should use. Since most vintage macs won't be doing "serious" work anytime soon. The latest system is often not the one to go to because "more features" and "more modern" is kind of irrelevant when using a 20 years old computer. Bob Morales posted:Low End Mac maintains a list of 'Road Apples' - old Macs you should never buy. Ever. So before you run to buy something from Craigslist or eBay, check the list. "Only Shallow posted:Pretty much the most modern system available for free on a 68k machine is the nineteen-part 7.5.3, 7.5.5 update, plus OpenTransport 1.1.2, AppleShare Client 3.7.4, LaserWriter 8.5.1 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ), and Quicktime 4.0.3. - Credits Thanks to the following members for their contributions: Bob Morales Only Shallow Thanks for your time, I'll expend the OP over the following days. Any feedback/help/contribution/correction is appreciated. Olivil fucked around with this message at Feb 7, 2012 around 19:03 |
| # ? Jan 28, 2012 04:32 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 02:07 |
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For the moment I will use this post as a Technical Trouble part where I'll collect useful question and answer or explanation that could be useful to anyone. I can't write to HFS volumes on my new Mac, help! Apple officially dropped write support of HFS since OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), the same time they dropped support for the Classic environment. The Classic environment for those who doesn't know is what's needed to run OS 9 (and older) apps and was part of OS X since 10.0. But there is a way to get HFS write support back using FuseHFS! Here's how: Uninstall everything that has to do with FuseHFS if you already messed around and proceed exactly as follow: 1. Install MacFUSE 2.1.9, it's kind of hidden, google it. It is NOT the easily downloadable "latest" version available on the official site. EDIT: Here's the LINK It's not listed because it's beta/unofficial, but it works trust me. 2. Install the latest FuseHFS 3. Install the latest OSXFUSE without MacFUSE Compatibility Layer 4. Reboot You should be good to go. I used this method on a MacBook Pro on 10.6 & 10.7. Also on my iMac on 10.7. Useful even if you just want to mess around in MinivMac or something, you create a 80MB hard drive, name it to xxx.dmg, mount it and drag files in there. If someone's interested I can explain more. I very honestly once got a kernel panic drag and dropping files to HFS volumes on 10.7.2 using this method, but it happened like 1/1000 times, and as far as I know there is no other way. Still don't be afraid about what I just said, it probably won't happen. Olivil fucked around with this message at Jan 29, 2012 around 03:51 |
| # ? Jan 28, 2012 04:32 |
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As the My "old Mac" desk - hey, this represents about $25,000 worth of Apple products if ya bought this poo poo when it was new It all works, too! Also, cheap KVM solutions for ADB Macs are a royal bitch.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 04:53 |
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Hell yeah. We had an Apple IIc and an SE/30 growing up and they were totally badass. Also nice Noid.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 05:01 |
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Hard drive in my Color Classic just died. Anyone know what kind of SCSI this thing takes and where I can get them?
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 05:03 |
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Phwach posted:Hard drive in my Color Classic just died. Anyone know what kind of SCSI this thing takes and where I can get them? I always feel kind of dumb buying used hard drives. I heard about some guy who used a SCSI --> ATA --> CompactFlash adapter. IMO if it works then this is the best solution as it is more reliable, makes no sound and probably cheaper or the same price. (People overrating the rarity of "VINTAGE SCSI MAC HARD-DRIVE L@@K")
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 05:08 |
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After some google sorcery, I found a pretty good wikipage on this issue. Here it is for anyone's reference: http://68kmla.org/wiki/SCSI_hard_di...acement_options
Goo Cube fucked around with this message at Jan 28, 2012 around 06:08 |
| # ? Jan 28, 2012 05:33 |
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I have old macs. I want a lisa.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 05:37 |
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DNova posted:I have old macs. I want a lisa. All you need is a shovel and a bus ticket to Utah!
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 05:51 |
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A couple of weeks ago I fired up my old Performa 575 to see if it still worked, and everything about it does except for the hard drive. I'd like to use an IDE drive I have sitting around, but SCSI -> IDE bridges look kinda expensive on Google. Isn't there some solution that would be under, like, $30?
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 05:52 |
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ohnoitschris posted:A couple of weeks ago I fired up my old Performa 575 to see if it still worked, and everything about it does except for the hard drive. I'd like to use an IDE drive I have sitting around, but SCSI -> IDE bridges look kinda expensive on Google. Isn't there some solution that would be under, like, $30? I've been down this road a LOT, and no, there's no easy way that works perfectly and is cheap. You can go the SCSI---->IDE route, which is expensive, you can try another old used 50 pin drive, or you can use surplus 80 pin server drives with an adaptor. The last option is cheap - sometimes you can get 9 and 18 gig drives for free - but they're terribly loud and sometimes have problems initializing and need a PRAM reset now and then. I hesitate to even mention this, but I've had very good luck removing old, non-op Apple drives, slamming them hard flat on a table to free the old bearings, then throwing them back in the machine. Sitting a long time seems to seize the platter bearings and the shock frees them. JnnyThndrs fucked around with this message at Jan 28, 2012 around 06:39 |
| # ? Jan 28, 2012 06:16 |
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Awesome thread. I have been wanting an old mac for a while. What is the name of the Mac that had built in A/v ports? Performa?
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 07:13 |
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First off, Olivil, thanks for the MacFUSE info in the other thread, I'll repost it here:Olivil posted:Uninstall everything that has to do with FuseHFS and proceed exactly as follow: I'm stuck at this point, though. I have 7.5.3 in one .smi + a bunch of .part files, and I have 7.5.5 in some .sea files, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do to get them onto the SE/30. If I format a floppy in the SE/30 it's not writeable by my Lion machine, otherwise I don't really know if there's a way I should be imaging these or whatever. Any tips?
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 07:58 |
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I have an old SE/30 that I managed to salvage from my school many years ago that even has a network card installed, the sound no longer works and I dont know of anywhere that would be able to fix it. But I would give anything to be able to play and finish Dark Castle on it (and finish it).
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 12:52 |
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DEUCE SLUICE posted:First off, Olivil, thanks for the MacFUSE info in the other thread, I'll repost it here: Depending on how much RAM you got, you might be better off running 7.0.1. If you have more than 16MB of RAM I'd go all the way to 7.5.5. Here's how  First off I'm assuming you're doing this on a Mac, which will be easier because the HFS file system is a retarded and cute mess because it contains a fork of metadata that is essential to the good working of pretty much everything and easily broken as you move them from filesystem to filesystem. Say, you only have a floppy drive on your old Pentium 3 in the basement with Win98 and you have a Windows PC. Then both NTFS and FAT32 could break your metadata. However, the HFS+ file system on your Mac will preserve the metadata. This is why most software you will find around the internet are in .sit archives. SIT packages are StuffIt Compressed Archive files, which is pretty much what every old macs used to archive and compress stuff. As far as I know, it preserves the metadata inside, so I THINK if could get to write on an HFS disk from Windows, you could simply move over the .sit and extract on your old mac, and the inside would be fine.If you want to open them on your Mac, I highly recommend The Unarchiver, which supports SIT, is free, and is pretty much the finest unarchiver for every format imaginable on OS X in my opinion. I don't recommend installing StuffIt unless you want to compress stuff in the SIT format. On that note if someone would be interested in making a simple tutorial for people on Windows I'd be appreciated. Not that I never had any PC in my life, I just always had some kind of Mac to transfer files to my old ones. Now for our actual problem.  For 7.5.3, what you have is a .SMI, "Self-Mounting Image", which is the old equivalent to the DMG you're used to on OS X, in multiple parts. Now, what you want to do is get all of them at the same place on your SE/30 (in the same folder). So you will painfully copy over each of the 19 SMI part and copy them to somewhere on your hard drive. When that's done, you double-click on the first one, which has the extension .smi, then you go to the bathroom or pull yourself a beer, verifying the image can be long. Notice how the Verifying window is quite similar to the one on OS X. When you're done, you'll have a new disk on your desktop, open this, double click install, and from there you should be good to go. For your 7.5.5 update, you have .SEA, "Self-Extracting Archive" which are unrelated to the above .SIT. You don't need extra software to extract them, just double click on each one of them to extract on an old machine. I usually do this on my modern Mac OS X machine, The Unarchiver supports extracting .sea files, which is very useful. To go back to my above explanation, you'll often find software in .sea.sit format because .sea NEEDS its metadata fork to work, .sit does not. So you get a double compressed small file that is easily preservable . What you get in the end are 3 floppy images. You will burn these floppies using Disk Utility and you'll have 3 update floppies. Now I'm pretty sure you can work this out by yourself.  Franko posted:I have an old SE/30 that I managed to salvage from my school many years ago that even has a network card installed, the sound no longer works and I dont know of anywhere that would be able to fix it. But I would give anything to be able to play and finish Dark Castle on it (and finish it). You tried external speakers? Olivil fucked around with this message at Jan 28, 2012 around 16:10 |
| # ? Jan 28, 2012 15:34 |
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JnnyThndrs posted:I hesitate to even mention this, but I've had very good luck removing old, non-op Apple drives, slamming them hard flat on a table to free the old bearings, then throwing them back in the machine. Sitting a long time seems to seize the platter bearings and the shock frees them. Haha! Seriously? Just the mental picture of someone slamming a hard drive around to fix it and it actually working boggles my mind. I'd figure that it would completely gently caress the heads to do that. Especially since I thought that HD disks from that era parked the head directly on the disk, rather than pulling off to the side. Or maybe, with the head in direct contact with the disk, it isn't subjected to a vibration since the platter is supporting it.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 17:06 |
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Low End Mac maintains a list of 'Road Apples' - old Macs you should never buy. Ever. So before you run to buy something from Craigslist or eBay, check the list. http://lowendmac.com/roadapples/ quote:The 12 Worst Macs There are more 'second class Macs' which you should stay away from as well. They are usually models that Apple gimped in their cost-cutting adventures. Features are either missing or you get things like 16-bit bus instead of 32-bit, no CPU cache, motherboards from older, lower-end models, etc.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 17:26 |
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If I format a disk in my SE/30 and it's not writeable on my other Mac, that means I still have a goofed up FuseHFS install then, right?
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 17:51 |
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Great thread! Thanks for making it! My family has owned an Apple computer ever since 1984. We had an original Apple IIe and a succession of various Macs over the years. My mom was a teacher and Apple offered great educational discounts for schools and school employees. There used to be a local used computer shop that sold tons of old Apple stuff: computers, printers, monitors. That's where I saw a really cool limited edition Mac Color Classic setup that I wanted so badly (but didn't buy since they wanted $500 for it ten years ago). I've worked with the old B&W Mac Classics every since they'd come out (I used to work for a university where half the computers were Apples because of the Apple educational discounts). My old supervisor at the uni actually owned a Lisa! I'm sure he still has it (he was keeping it as a collector's item). At that local computer store, I once bought a beautiful brand-new Apple 12-inch RGB monitor and kept it around for a little emergency monitor. Picture on it was beautiful. Loaned to my mom and it slowly went bad just from aging. It was probably 20 years old when she finally tossed it out (had it recycled). Eight years ago, I went back to that computer store to find a replacement and they no longer had any of the old Mac stuff. Most of their inventory had been amassed from schools getting rid of old Apple equipment in the late '90s and they'd sold off all their inventory. Around 2003, I went searching for another cheap Apple monitor and ended up in this weird warehouse place run by some Middle Eastern guys. They had the last of the old school Apple inventory just sitting around and were slowly putting it on pallets to ship overseas to third world countries. I poked around, looking for a working Apple computer or monitor. They kept giving me their "guarantee" that the thing would work when I got it home. Needless to say, I didn't believe them and went home empty-handed. After that, you had to go to eBay to find old Apple stuff.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 17:51 |
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DEUCE SLUICE posted:If I format a disk in my SE/30 and it's not writeable on my other Mac, that means I still have a goofed up FuseHFS install then, right? I'd say yes. Forgot to say you need to install OSXFUSE WITHOUT the MacFUSE Compatibility Layer, do you remember if you ticked it? If so that might be it.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 17:57 |
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JerksNeedLoveToo posted:Haha! Seriously? Just the mental picture of someone slamming a hard drive around to fix it and it actually working boggles my mind. Nah, the heads on those old disc drives still park off to the side, but many of them aren't self- parking - that is, if you kill the power in the middle of a read/ write, the head will stay poised over the platter, leading to physical damage if the unit is moved abruptly. As for the slamming, I'm not the first or the last person to have success with it, I'm pretty sure I heard about it here many years ago. poo poo, it's not like you have anything to lose, nobody's gonna send a 40mb, 20-year-old Quantum drive to a data-retrieval service.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 18:05 |
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JnnyThndrs posted:Nah, the heads on those old disc drives still park off to the side, but many of them aren't self- parking - that is, if you kill the power in the middle of a read/ write, the head will stay poised over the platter, leading to physical damage if the unit is moved abruptly. I know the "grease" on the bearings is known to dry over time when they're not booted regularly. Maybe that's something to think about. Old hard drives
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 18:15 |
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Bummer, now the disks my SE/30 manage to successfully format just don't show up. 
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 19:38 |
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JnnyThndrs posted:As for the slamming, I'm not the first or the last person to have success with it, I'm pretty sure I heard about it here many years ago. poo poo, it's not like you have anything to lose, nobody's gonna send a 40mb, 20-year-old Quantum drive to a data-retrieval service. People do this all the time, actually.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2012 20:28 |
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Once upon a time I had a Quadra 840av, decked out with 128mb of ram and 8-odd gigabytes of disk space, all cobbled together from parts of machines that were basically found in dumpsters. The 840av was the end of the road for 68k macintoshes, and the fastest 68k mac ever built. drat, that thing could play a mean game of Marathon.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 02:08 |
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Bob Morales posted:Low End Mac maintains a list of 'Road Apples' - old Macs you should never buy. Ever. So before you run to buy something from Craigslist or eBay, check the list. The Color Classic is actually worth quite a bit and is highly sought-after. Stock, it's a piece of poo poo, but if you swap the motherboard from an LC 520/550/575 into it it becomes one of the best old Macs out there.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 02:15 |
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Bob Morales posted:Low End Mac maintains a list of 'Road Apples' - old Macs you should never buy. Ever. So before you run to buy something from Craigslist or eBay, check the list. This list also contains the first two computers I cut my teeth on, a Classic and a LC. I'd say my parents were cheap but then they would've bought some useless 386 instead One of my only regrets was years ago coming across one of the giant Quadra AV towers at a garage sale for like $25...and passing on it, probably because it was before I could drive and I was on a bicycle. I still have a sincere appreciation of that platinum grey color all of the 68k / early PPC Macs and the IIGS came in. Aside from the yellowing issue they still look awesome as hell.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 03:03 |
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Quadras had Apple's worst case design, though. You had to disassemble everything and remove the motherboard to install RAM. I'm pretty sure I managed to gash open my thumb once or twice in the process, too.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 03:07 |
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Oh man I used to have a ton of old Apple stuff. My first computer was an Apple IIe - I learned BASIC on that back in the late 80s. Then we got an LC520 in 1993, and a PowerComputing PowerCenter 166 in 1996 or 1997. My mom used that computer daily until about 2008. For my high school graduation, my family pooled cash together to get me a 450mhz B&W G3 tower... a month before the G4s came out. I still have that computer in my closet, and it still works. Throughout the years, I've also had a Powerbook 165, Powerbook 5300cs, a Powerbook Duo 2300c with full DuoDock, a G3 Powerbook (Pismo), and I still have a Newton 120. The most awesome thing, though, was the university auction in 1999 when I bought an entire table full of old Macs and printers. If I remember right, there were 3 Quadra 605s, two Quadra 630s, a couple PowerMac 6300s, a PowerMac 5200LC that worked as a web/hotline server and router until 2006, a Performa 575 with a broken monitor (the motherboard went into our LC520), an LCII, 2 LCs, a Mac Plus, an Apple II+, several Apple external hard drives in the 80-160 mb range, a stack of Apple Extended Keyboard IIs, and, the greatest find ever, an Apple LaserWriter 16/600PS. My parents still use that printer to this day, on the same toner cartridge it had when I got it. The entire table was $25. So that's 4/12 worst Macs ever. One day, I'll finish that list.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 03:11 |
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'worst Mac' was still better than 'no Mac'. I nabbed a 6300 from my aunt's basement after her divorce, it was a real junker and being on a cable modem felt like 56k. Multi-tasking on it was so terrible, my AIM messages would all of a sudden show up and freeze the thing. In high school we had a computer lab of LC II's that were just junk. I threw away all my old Mac games, mice and keyboards, and Mac to VGA adapters during my last move, so as much as I want to grab another one, I probably won't.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 03:35 |
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Updated the OP, finished the Macintosh range, added the Macintosh II range. If you feel like adding some range or making a list of the new features of the Mac OS from System 1 to System 7-OS 8, simply follow my style and I'll add them and give credits.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 03:40 |
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I have two Power Macintosh 7200's which I intend to turn into some kind of whore of a machine, however it seems I've lost the keyboard to computer ADB cable. According to Wikipedia, the cable has the exact pin layout as a bog standard S-Video cable. Can I just use one of those, or will I have to find an "official" ADB cable?
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 16:37 |
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Lynxifer posted:I have two Power Macintosh 7200's which I intend to turn into some kind of whore of a machine, however it seems I've lost the keyboard to computer ADB cable. Same thing. A bonus is that s-video cables were (and probably still are) easier to find and cheaper.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 16:46 |
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Lynxifer posted:I have two Power Macintosh 7200's which I intend to turn into some kind of whore of a machine, however it seems I've lost the keyboard to computer ADB cable. Just FYI, Sonnet has a G3 upgrade card for the 7200 for the amazingly low price of $30. Makes a helluva difference.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 18:06 |
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Bob Morales posted:Same thing. A bonus is that s-video cables were (and probably still are) easier to find and cheaper. I have hundreds of the drat cables here and there, So this is a costless loss. Thanks for confirming. JnnyThndrs posted:Just FYI, Sonnet has a G3 upgrade card for the 7200 for the amazingly low price of $30. Makes a helluva difference. Whoop-Whoop! Although when I come to fit it, I am sure my younger brother will ask "Can this make it run Lion?" All I need now is to extract a Graphics Card and I'll be bouncing around in Pathways to Darkness again. Thanks for the heads up on this
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 18:25 |
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JnnyThndrs posted:Just FYI, Sonnet has a G3 upgrade card for the 7200 for the amazingly low price of $30. Makes a helluva difference. I remember installing one of those back in the day, made the mac unstable as hell
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 19:36 |
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Olivil posted:Especially if it has an auto-ejecting floppy drive. Or even cooler, an auto-injecting drive. quote:Macintosh SE (1987) - SE stands for "System Expansion" meaning it has a slot for an expansion card (ethernet, etc.). It's a significant upgrade over the Plus in that it has either 2x 800KB floppy drive or 1x 800KB floppy drive and a 20MB or 40MB internal SCSI hard-drive.  They're hard to find by themselves these days but fairly common to run across in old machines.quote:Macintosh IIfx (1990) - At the time, the fastest Mac. Full size "non-compact" case, thus, 6 expansion slots. 40MHz 68030. 4MB of RAM standard, expandable to 128MB. Very interesting machines in my opinion. The pinnacle of the 68030. Probably the one you want, I do. Versions of the OS up to and including 7.5.5 are available free from Apple, but 7.6 is definitely worth finding if you have a beefy enough machine for it. System 7 Today has more information and links to applications. Pretty much the most modern system available for free on a 68k machine is the nineteen-part 7.5.3, 7.5.5 update, plus OpenTransport 1.1.2, AppleShare Client 3.7.4, LaserWriter 8.5.1 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ), and Quicktime 4.0.3. Gamba's site is/was an excellent resource for system software, boot disks, enablers, and lots of other stuff, but many of the links are broken these days.  If you get a machine loaded up with an ethernet card (PDS, LC PDS, NuBus, Comm Slot, what have you) and install AppleShare Client, you can share files to it using netatalk 2.1 or 2.2 if built with --enable-ddp. Lynxifer posted:All I need now is to extract a Graphics Card and I'll be bouncing around in Pathways to Darkness again. Thanks for the heads up on this For an old PCI Powermac like that I'd probably try for a Twin Turbo 128. Drivers can be found on System 7 Today if not included. An old card like that and the 7200's onboard video will both require a Mac DB-15 to VGA adapter
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 19:40 |
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Franko posted:I have an old SE/30 that I managed to salvage from my school many years ago that even has a network card installed, the sound no longer works and I dont know of anywhere that would be able to fix it. But I would give anything to be able to play and finish Dark Castle on it (and finish it). My god I'd kill for an SE/30, much of my childhood was wasted on learning company games and lemmings on one.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 19:45 |
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djssniper posted:I remember installing one of those back in the day, made the mac unstable as hell I had a bunch of trouble with mine, too, but eventually got it working pretty smoothly.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 20:00 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 02:07 |
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Glad to see this thread exists. I have had the following Macs: - Macintosh Portable - LC II - Power Macintosh G3/333 Beige - Power Macintosh Dual-G4 1.2 GHz - Mac Mini (Duo, 2006) I've also had an eMate 300 which was modified to use 4x AA batteries. It was given away to Ahmeni back in 2010 as a part of a YOSPOS gift exchange. I still have the G4 and the LC II but the only old Macintosh hardware that I have desired is a later-model Newton or a 68040 non-AV Quadra. The G4 has had its hardware maxed out with 2 GB of RAM and the LC II has one of those somewhat rare PDS 10 Mbit Ethernet adapters. I'll throw some stuff in here that is fun to do on older Macs later.
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| # ? Jan 29, 2012 22:51 |
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