512K & Plus Upgrade Kits?

[Mac128]

We all know Apple offered official upgrade kits for the original 128K Macintosh to 512K as well as 128K/512K/e to Plus upgrades, which involved swapping logic boards and in the case of the Plus upgrade, rear covers, by authorized Apple employees only.

I was looking through the procedure manual which specified that the old logic boards and case covers be returned to Apple and wondered: what did Apple do with all of those old parts? Certainly the case backs could be of absolutely no use to them, short of recycling the plastic, if that were even possible then. Perhaps the RFI shields could be re-used in refurbished or repaired units, but what about the logicboards? The earliest 128K boards would have been of no use in the Macs that were selling from 1985 to 1987 as they had been upgraded to the hybrid boards by that point. The 512K boards would have had limited life as well in the 512Ke. But could Apple use these boards for any purpose other than refurbishing and parts for repair? Would that even be cost effective? Were they recyclable for any reasonable savings? Or did they just all go into a landfill? I would think given the relative longevity and durability of the logic-board that such failures were somewhat rare in any event.

Too bad consumers weren't allowed to keep their old boards and backs. Would have been a great for more opportunities to restore the Macs today. Of course back then, people probably considered it a "service" to dispose of the antiquated parts. Wonder if Apple actually charged a fee as part of the upgrade kit price to dispose of it "properly". Would be interesting to know if a customer could have kept it if only they asked.

 

[superpantoufle]

Well, when you know that hundreds (thousands?) of new Lisas where buried in a field when Apple stopped to sell them as the Mac XL, I highly doubt those boards had a better life...

 

[Charlieman]

Returned boards/cases went into landfill, keeping a few on one side for warranty fixes. Most computer industry warranty fixes use "refurbished components".

Mac128 is slightly wrong in saying that only authorised Apple employees performed upgrades. The majority were performed by local dealers, not formal employees, and nobody was counting the number of returned boards at Apple. Some leaked out into the market, hence this sort of stuff:

http://www.vintagemacworld.com/build_own.html

By the time the SE arrived, there was nothing worth salvaging in a 128K to Plus. But in the late 1980s or early 1990s, they'd be useful to the rare metal extractors.

 

[JDW]

Too bad consumers weren't allowed to keep their old boards and backs.

Well, I know of one customer who was allowed to keep his 128k board, as shown in my 512k Upgrade Kit photo. This photo shows the actual box the 512k upgrade shipped in, and the motherboard shown is the 128k board that was removed. When I purchased my pristine Mac 512k machine, it shipped with the original Picasso box, floppies, mouse, keyboard, carrying case, and yes, this upgrade kit with the stock 128k board inside! (I purchased it on EBAY for $400. It also came with some old books, including one on Excel. It came with an original boxed copy of Multiplan, original boxed copy of OverVUE, 4 complete versions of CopyIIMac, 4 boxes of blank Apple branded 400k floppies (most unused without even the labels applied), and other software I can't remember off the top of my head without going downstairs and taking a look. This setup even came with many original receipts for the Mac, upgrades and software. But alas, no documentation on the Mac 512k upgrade.

All of this stuff was used and held by the original owner until he passed on (which is why it went up for auction). As such, I can say for a certainty the 128k board was not bought at an auction later and then added inside that Mac 512k box. I was told that these items had been in storage for a long time. And I can see that too because the machine lacks any yellowing and even the spacebar on the keyboard is in pristine condition and not discolored, like most every spacebar you'll find on EBAY now days.

So I will assume that the original owner simply paid more to retain his 128k board. Since he retained receipts from most everything he every bought in this setup, he seems like the kind of fellow that would do that. And I would therefore logically deduce that Apple would have allowed it, if the customer paid to retain the original board.

 

[Bunsen]

Oh great, the spambots are back :

 

[lumpydog]

It amazes me how many vintage Macs have been upgraded in some way. You have to pay close attention to what you're buying...

Check out this Mac on eBay... being sold as a "Mac Plus".

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=230320233103

Lumpy

 

[shred]

The upgrade kits were ordered by dealers as an exchange item. If the dealer failed to return all the old parts promptly, the exchange would be converted to a "buy outright", costing the dealer many times the original price. There would have been the occasional disorganised Apple Authorised Service Provider who found out about this policy the hard way though.

Don't forget that at the time that these upgrades were popular, there were some clone machines around that required a set of original Apple ROMs to be "legal". The Oubound was a good example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbound_Laptop. Most people simply burned copies of the ROMs to EPROMs, but this breached copyright laws. This made Apple very careful about making sure old boards were returned.

In later years, they were not so careful. In the case of conversions from the Centris 650 to the PowerMac 7100, my employer at the time got stuck with a couple of sets of old Centris parts due to an incompetent tech ordering the kit under the wrong part number (twice!). Each cost us AU$2000 - not small change! In the first instance, we bought a case and power supply, scrounged cables, disk drives etc and made ourselves a Centris 650 out of the parts. It had no serial number. It'd be weird if a "frankenstein" machine like that ever turned up on eBay, advertised as collectable! In the early days, this would not have been possible, due to Apple having a weird policy re not selling cases separately.

 

[Charlieman]

To follow on from Shred's insights: Apple dealers in the UK had little opportunity to sell spare parts. About 1994, we suffered a burglary because RAM was expensive at the time and the thieves removed every SIMM like thing from our computers. They even unknowingly stole the ROM from a 6100. Apple UK made it difficult, but not impossible, to buy a replacement.

Incidentally and for humour value:

1. The thieves had been followed by the police for 100+ miles before the event, but the police got lost in traffic. The police then staked out the wrong building, 300 yards away.

2. The thieves entered a building which is used for animal experimentation (ie high security), stole RAM from various computers, exiting via a room containing thirty brand new Mac 6100s sitting in their boxes.

3. Total insurance loss: £250,000 (they stole memory from a mini computer that had to be put down). Potential benefit to thieves: £5,000, assuming that they worked out that the Unix workstation RAM was valuable.