Advice on Mac Portable selling?

[Frobozz]

I bought some old Mac magazines from a guy yesterday whose wife had been a huge Mac fan. We were talking and he mentioned she had a Mac with a suitcase handle. I thought that had to be a portable. I’ve never actually seen a portable in real life.

She had a 512k (not upgraded to Plus), a plus, and a 5120 portable. I didn’t have time to really check it out but I advised him not to power it on and told him I’d ask around about what he could do to sell it and what it might be worth. We looked at sold EBay listings but there weren’t much and they were all non functional it looked to me.

I would love to buy this myself but I just can’t add more machines. I know the battery is probably dead. Are the screens like 50/50 chance of being toast? I have 2 old PBs and 1 of them has the screen bloom thing. I didn’t think to examine the screen closely but did t notice anything.

What’s this guys best bet for getting a decent price? I could help him a bit with restoration-y tasks (give me a chance to play with it and get it out of my system). And what would fair prices be for working vs bad screen vs bad screen and bad battery?

 

[finkmac]

if you have to ask, it’s 50 bucks

 

[Frobozz]

Oof. This thread has a pretty scary set of info.

GOTCHAS when buying a Macintosh Portable?

I am curious what issues people need to be aware of when buying a Macintosh Portable, especially the backlit model (5126). I realize Portables won't power on without a good battery, but new batteries like this are sold on EBAY. Maybe some of you can share experiences with those. I also realize...

tinkerdifferent.com

Sounds like:
- need to recap motherboard. I would guess right now that kills this gentleman's interest. Amiga of Rochester is a long ways away...
- need to replace battery. I found this, $60 already assembled, so that's good. https://www.ebay.com/itm/312370924770
- need to pray that 9v battery didn't corrode critical components. Machine is parts machine if it did. oof.
- monitor seems like a crapshoot, but can't tell until recapping and replacing main battery.
- it's not getting shipped, and it was in a container tub, so I'm guessing it's not physically broken (I didn't notice anything in my 3 mins with the machine).

he has a neighbor that will post things on Facebook marketplace for him (he's 80; doesn't do technology at all). What's fairish here? I see $400 on eBay for "untested" and/or testing-and-monitor-is-junked. Local pick up only... $300? His interest is to clear out stuff and not feel like he's being ripped off because he doesn't know what his wife's stuff is worth.

There was some other stuff in the tub; he mentioned the original user guide is in there somewhere. I saw a Fujitsu (?) external floppy that looked like it had a Mac floppy connector on it. Was actually kind of cool looking. I know there were non-Apple floppy drives, I don't come across them very often.

 

[4seasonphoto]

Sell as-is for "whatever". Good restored condition, $200+, but you will need to invest more than $200 worth of parts and labor to get it there

 

[joshc]

Restoring a Portable to working condition is an expensive and laborious task, if the seller is just looking to sell it as-is then that will be the easiest and quickest way of gaining some money from it. Sinking money into parts carries a risk because Portables are not the easiest Macs to get working. I tried and failed.

 

[Frobozz]

Restoring a Portable to working condition is an expensive and laborious task, if the seller is just looking to sell it as-is then that will be the easiest and quickest way of gaining some money from it. Sinking money into parts carries a risk because Portables are not the easiest Macs to get working. I tried and failed.

Yeah, I hear you. I'd love to have one of these machines to play around with but I just know I'd either leave it around without ever getting around to fixing it, or I'd try to get it fixed and break it more. I still have a mostly working Lisa (1 bad memory board, keyboard needs re-doing) I need to get around to...

 

[Mk.558]

Portables weren't really on the desirable list until around 2012-2014ish. Before then you could get a Portable for a song, as they weren't on the hot list like the usual 840AV, SE/30, IIfx, 128K, the lot.

After then Portables spiked in price, suddenly became quite desirable, and the forums got a minor inundation of troubled Portables. They're probably just as prone to issues as SE/30s are, if not more.

In real life, they're kind of novel, keyboard is nice, the trackball is neat, the screen is remarkably crisp considering the time, and even without a backlight the visibility is really not that bad if it's a well-lit room, and probably has less eyestrain than a CRT of Compact. They're also fragile, prone to all kinds of different issues and are heavy. They're worth repairing though, but you'd be a fool to think you'll end up money positive after the effort to resuscitate it. Anything less than 4MiB of RAM and I wouldn't touch it, but fortunately there's new production RAM cards available for it.

 

[PB145B]

I sold my mostly-working recapped 5120 in late 2022 for around $350 if I remember right. I do not regret that decision one bit either. The video cable was starting to fail also.

I love the portable and hate it at the same time. Such a cool design. I think it looks amazing. But the unreliability combined with the absurd cost of them now is why I hate them as far as actually owning and using one. Probably the most unreliable '80s Mac for sure. Way worse than an SE/30 in my opinion. Even without the cap issues, the power circuit design is crappy and failure prone.

I give the Portable a 10/10 for looks and a 2/10 for usability.

 

[finkmac]

idk mine has been rock solid. could be a skill issue?

 

[Mk.558]

The scatter plot for good working Portables and not-working or troubled Portables would look very different. Statistically, having a rock solid one is going to be a much lower probability. Also survivorship bias, statistical anomalies and outliers probably fits in to your situation there Mr Fink.

 

[joshc]

You hardly see any working ones on eBay which probably tells you all you need to know. The hybrid chip goes bad and is very problematic.

 

[dramirez]

- need to replace battery. I found this, $60 already assembled, so that's good. https://www.ebay.com/itm/312370924770
that's only the case, you'll need a suitable battery to fit inside!

 

[dramirez]

You hardly see any working ones on eBay which probably tells you all you need to know. The hybrid chip goes bad and is very problematic.

Androda made a replacement: https://androda.work/product/macintosh-portable-hybrid-module-recreation/

He provided a new video cable for my M5126.

 

[finkmac]

lol those things are just hot glue and a lantern cell. quite the rip for what you're getting
also disposable. if you want the "serviceable" one you gotta pay 75!

just get a lifepo4 and do it yourself for like 20 bucks.

 

[Juror22]

idk mine has been rock solid. could be a skill issue?

Ouch!
Back when I was into restoring autos, there was a fellow sports car aficionado, who said, "...there are two types of owners, those that can afford them and those that cannot."
It took me a while longer to figure out that the costs come in many forms - time and effort being the most dear and the financial less so. The costs associated with acquiring and restoring the Portable are non-trivial to most, but keeping these going (trotting them out periodically, since they need to be run and conditioning the SLA batteries come to mind), can be tiring. No mention has been made yet of the hard drives either, which are a known issue as well, requiring a fix or replacement (also not cheap) and re-capping the AC adapter, which is likely needed in most of them now. Also, the screens can develop issues, lines of pixels stuck, but I've not seen them with the blooming issue that affects some of the later PB screens.

Since these require an inordinate amount of skill to keep them running (even among dedicated collectors) they are a level of 'skill' unto themselves, even beyond SE/30s and the like.

 

[PB145B]

idk mine has been rock solid. could be a skill issue?

Certainly not a "skill issue." These are well-known to be unreliable and hard to fix even by very experienced people. Saying the problems people have with Mac Portables is a "skill issue" is like saying LC575s aren't brittle, it's just "people handling them wrong." Silly!

I got lucky with my Portable. The original motherboard was severely damaged and I actually found a NOS board on eBay (this was before the values went through the roof). That board was in great shape and worked fine after a recap. But that was definitely the exception not the rule.

 

[Joopmac]

i have 8 portables and the 5120 are pretty finicky

 

[joshc]

Some of the trickier Macs (Portable, Colour Classic, TAM) are definitely akin to tricky classic cars. In the case of the TAM, it’s basically a bit like a TVR or Maserati… trying to be rather good but it just isn’t.

 

[Frobozz]

blech. Color Classic. I was living in Japan when that came out, and we got one. such a bad decision. It's like a Fiero. Could have been great, but terminally hampered by being underpowered so the real sports car in the product family doesn't lose sales. As slow as you think the color classic is, let me assure it's slower when you are running kanji talk. Even if that's not strictly "true", it feels true to me after all these years.

I'm glad I posted here. I might have been lured by the portable.

 

[joshc]

Colour Classics are charming and despite the slowness, actually fine for the sort of stuff they were meant for, but they are super frustrating to keep working. They almost had a good thing going but they made some questionable design/engineering choices, typical 90s Apple.