Compact Macs: the trouble with Tribbles. How many have you wound up with?

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Compacts aren't quite that bad, but they sure do seem to try to approach the reproductive rate of Tribbles, corrected for mass/biomass ratio of course.

Only one of the many in my collection escaped the storage room whirlpool and that only because it was in the process of being hacked. I became adjusted to and even happy with that  .  .  . for a while  .  .  .   :  

Since then, happenstance has placed me within the gravitational pull of a breeding pair, so between them the three have managed to approach double digits the last time I looked, I'm almost afraid to do another head count.

So, the questions are:

1/  Did you have any left over or bequeathed to you from back in the day?

2/  When you got the bug and set out to acquire one, which model was it?

3/  After you started collecting, how many refugees were simply tossed your way or were found items?

4/  How many did you run across and fell irresistibly into their inescapable gravitational well.

5/  How many models were you then irresistibly drawn to after exposure to the first?

6/  How many were unintended results of trades or purchases of other Macs.

7/  How many were you forced to acquire for parts?

8/  How many models were acquired for testing/evaluation of expansion options that fell into your lap?

9/  How many seem to have appeared from causes unknown.

What other scenarios can you think of for the start of such a menagerie?

In my case:

1 = 0

2 = 0

3 = 1 the whirlpool survivor, forlorn Classic rescued from the mean streets of Manhattan.

4 = 2 DrexelMac (w/ Plus upgrade) and a Plus/20SC/CDSC that drew me irresistibly in at a flea market.

5 = 0

6 = 1 SE/30 - DOA trade for one of the spare LC475s (flaky, undoubtedly caps)

7 = 1 SE/30 - see above

8 = 1 SE, too many cards on hand or snagged out of curiosity and much too much personal history.

9 = 2 minimum based on last head count, Pluses? (products of unintended breeding program?)

And to think I was happy with just that single, two disaster survivor hacked Classic. :-/

Your case?

 

[Themk]

1. 1; an SE bequeathed to me by a gentleman who bought it in '89 (recieved in '14)

2. January 2017; aquirred an SE/30 and now many more peripherals

3. 0/1 SE was bequeathed due to me owning a IIgs.

4. 1; stupid SE/30, sunk so much money into it.

5. 0

6. 0

7. 0

8. 0

9. 0

How bad was the storage whirlpool? You mention it a lot; must have had a ton in it!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

There are/were pictures of items lost posted somewhere here, I'll try to dig 'em up just to see how many Compacts appear in them, mostly it was stacks and stacks of DuoDocks, BoxMacs and Clones. The only Compact that really mattered was "Pooter," my original SE/Radius16 workstation. I successfully fought the urge to recreate it for over eleven years until that $30 craiglisting popped up on the radar. :-/

 

[EvilCapitalist]

Let's see...

1 - 0

2 - 2002ish, though I didn't act on it until 2012 (big mistake).  Was aiming for an SE/30 but my first Compact was a regular (non-FDHD) SE

3 - 0

4 - Oh lord, at least 30, probably closer to 40 or so

5 - Too many

6 - 0

7 - At least 5

8 - 0

9 - 0, thankfully.  I'd be a bit worried if they truly were taking the Tribble route!

 

[macosten]

1 - 0

2 - First one was an FDHD SE back around... 2013-ish?

3-  Complete computer-wise? Well, to be fair, the first *mac* I collected was an iMac G3 that I found in one of Dad's offices, sitting unused, so... I guess that, but that's not really a compact now is it

4 - either 0 or 1 depending on how I interpret that question, I think

5 - ...I guess the CC? The LC Compact, in other words.

6 - 0

7 - 1? Not really "forced".

8 - 0?

9 - ...0. Perhaps you just smell good to vintage computers.

 

[Juror22]

1  - 2, Father-in-law's SE and a friend's SE/30

2  Another SE/30

3  - 1

4  - 2 a 512 and a boxed plus

5  Primarily just the SE/30, a little bit SE, also

6  - 0 (although I got a couple of power supplies and analog boards this way)

7  - 2

8  - 1

9  - 2

 

[Themk]

There are/were pictures of items lost posted somewhere here, I'll try to dig 'em up just to see how many Compacts appear in them, mostly it was stacks and stacks of DuoDocks, BoxMacs and Clones. The only Compact that really mattered was "Pooter," my original SE/Radius16 workstation. I successfully fought the urge to recreate it for over eleven years until that $30 craiglisting popped up on the radar. :-/

I will be interested in the photos when you find them.

 

[MinerAl]

1/  Did you have any left over or bequeathed to you from back in the day?

     About 4 Mac 512s that I inherited from the school that bought them new in the late 80s.  I hadn't bought many since the early 2000s, until the universe messed with me a few months ago and a $50 Plus in original box showed up at the recycle joint.

2/  When you got the bug and set out to acquire one, which model was it?

     I ordered 3 SEs and one SE/30 ("Osiris"), all with network cards, from a usenet post back in the mid 90s. $700 ($150x3 + $250)

3/  After you started collecting, how many refugees were simply tossed your way or were found items?

     Most of mine were acquired when I left the grade school teaching job in '03.  I only kept the best 10 or so, 4 being the FatMacs from #1.  They threw away the other 10-15 because it was 2003 and they were "useless" (even though they were all Appletalk'd to a printer and word processing like champs at the time...) They later tossed the 12 fruit iMacs and the 12 G3 AIOs.  New guy wanted PCs.  He was also a thoroughgoing creep, so they tossed him the next year.

4/  How many did you run across and fell irresistibly into their inescapable gravitational well.

     2. A craigslist SE/30 for $30 a few years ago, and the aforementioned Plus-in-the-box

5/  How many models were you then irresistibly drawn to after exposure to the first?

     All of them.  Except... I was originally using them for email/printing in classrooms, because I could get them super cheap from the surplus place.  There were literal piles/walls of the little guys in the 1990s.  $50 for SE/30s, $25 for SEs, $20 for 512s and $10 for 128s.  I routinely turned up my nose at the sad little 128s because they couldn't run the (super low resource) email program I put on them for teachers and a word processor.  Wish I'd had a 1996-$100 worth of them of them in 2011 when the "Steve Jobs signed" craze was going on.  Coulda sent my kids to school for a year.

6/  How many were unintended results of trades or purchases of other Macs.

     None.  I'm responsible for every one of these doorstops.

7/  How many were you forced to acquire for parts?

     None.  I've cannibalized a few and made other things from their shells (Macquaria, Halloween masks, a tiny little black and white SVGA monitor, 80% of a Quadra Classic)

8/  How many models were acquired for testing/evaluation of expansion options that fell into your lap?

     Again, I have a surplus, and some of them had batteries go boom, so...

9/  How many seem to have appeared from causes unknown.

     I only know/remember the circumstances of about 5 of them... the rest are all a blur.

Fun!  Thanks for asking!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

6/  How many were unintended results of trades or purchases of other Macs.

     None.  I'm responsible for every one of these doorstops.

:lol: Sweet repurposing notion though, I've been using a convenient styrofoam packing "wedge" as a doorstop for the closet next to the MainMac/Firefox Win7 NetBook workstation setup.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

1/ ZERO I wasn't born when the last Compact rolled off the production line! My dad is a PC kinda guy. Hates Macs.

2/ Mac Plus. Thought one was sufficient. It wasn't. Now I have 10 of those.

3/ I found one iMac on the curb, and volunteered with bibilit to save a couple of PowerMacs, Powerbooks, and 3 Compacts. One of those cases of "take everything or it goes to the trash". Got everything for free though!!

4/ All of them.

5/ All of them, but SE/30 in particular.

6/ One. That SE I got for free with the big lot of Macs.

7/ None for now. I don't like vandalising a Mac for parts (even a dead unit). I prefer paying extra $ and get just the one item I need.

8/ I got one pretty sorry looking SE/30 for 10 bucks. This is now my test bench.

9/ None actually. I save every single ad as a Web archive on my HD, as well as all the mails with the previous owner.

 

[Unknown_K]

First compact was a freebee from a computer reseller that got it dropped in his lap and wanted it gone. It was a classic II. I cleaned it , installed an OS, played with it a while, recapped it, and eventually sold it to a forum member here.

Next compact was an SE FDHD, from the same guy as above. Cleaned it and installed a Radius 68030/16 board. Still have it and works. Uses and external SCSI to Ethernet.

After that got a couple SE/30's. One was a shell (missing motherboard and the rest was there) and I popped in a SE30 motherboard and Ethernet card (from an old forum Member Macto). Second I got shipped to me free from a guy I met on an Amiga forum board who liked macs and I pointed him to a huge lot of them close to him. This model had 128MB RAM and Ethernet.

Got a normal very cheap SE from ebay because I had another Radius SE 030 board I wanted to install (doesn't fit) but still kept it around.

Somewhere along the way I think I recased an SE30 (or SE forget which) because the previous owner used a screwdriver to pry it open and boogered it up.

So basically I have 2 or 3 SE's and 2 SE30's.

 

[MJ313]

1/  Did you have any left over or bequeathed to you from back in the day?

None at all.

2/  When you got the bug and set out to acquire one, which model was it?

SE/30. It's how I wound up here. There's some thread somewhere on it.  Now I can't escape.  :-/

3/  After you started collecting, how many refugees were simply tossed your way or were found items?

None. None have been thrown my way. Never found one on a street corner or dumpster. I have found a couple LCs and PM's that way, but not compacts.

4/  How many did you run across and fell irresistibly into their inescapable gravitational well.

Eh... all of them.  I probably wouldn't have made an effort to get a 512k, but it showed up local and for a good price. Same with the Plus. 

5/  How many models were you then irresistibly drawn to after exposure to the first?

All of the ones I got I suppose. Probably wouldn't have been too rushed to get a Classic, but the proto unit was impossible to resist. 

6/  How many were unintended results of trades or purchases of other Macs.

None. See 3.

7/  How many were you forced to acquire for parts?

None. 

8/  How many models were acquired for testing/evaluation of expansion options that fell into your lap?

My original Color Classic's sole purpose was for testing a stack of 550 boards I got from a buddy. 

9/  How many seem to have appeared from causes unknown.  

None

Other:

Never owned a Classic II... that's the one I think I can fully resist 100%.  Never owned a 128k either.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I like the "other" category and the Q&A (w/detailed) format that's developing is much better than the scoreboard format. For just this thread I'm going with suspending disbelief that the CC is a member of the Compact category for the sake of the personal journey aspect.

Listing "Resistible Compacts" sounds like fun. Mine would be the original RoadApple, the intentionally memory lamed 128K and the Classic II for the same reason. Had I not rescued the forlorn Classic that would have been in the same category, it should have been an 8MB 68000 like the Portable and PB100, but I guess that wouldn't really have been a "Classic Compact Config." The CC is on that list as well for reasons I've made obvious elsewhere.

Fun!  Thanks for asking!

You're welcome! This has turned out to be a lot more informative and fun than anticipated. See above.

I will be interested in the photos when you find them.

Not really on topic, but a personal history of collecting thread is as good a place as any.

Storage room whirlpool victims:







So far I've only spotted one packed in bubble wrap, probably Pooter, but there's at least the SE/30 in there. I was more interested in documenting boxes. Lower shelf is supported by Mac II series on end and second shelf by by IIcx/LC form factor Macs. It's not a complete inventory, maybe I'll find more pics.

The software, parts and peripherals boxes aren't all shown, some were in the file boxes, but I had larger ones behind there. I can tell that two informal photo sessions are represented. The last pic shows my first TPD, a PanaPro19 sitting on the original IIx RocketPad. Thankfully the Rocket was in the Magic Plastic Shoe Box of NuBus Goodness™ in the apartment when I was hospitalized about 12 years ago and consequently lost the storage room.

Most of the really interesting toys in the collection were in the apartment at that time. My parents covered the rent for that, but didn't know about the storage room. 12 years ago this was junk that likely wound up in the dumpster, they'd be a find now on the TV show. The makeshift tablesaw base would be handy, No room for all the big tools anymore, but I really miss that metal cutting Horizontal Bandsaw across from the PanaPro. :-/

< /OT tangent >

If anyone wants to discuss this tangent it should really be done in a dedicated thread. Back to TribbleMacs!

 

[jsarchibald]

1/  Did you have any left over or bequeathed to you from back in the day?

No, my first compact was 2010

2/  When you got the bug and set out to acquire one, which model was it?

My first one was a 512K upgraded to a Plus, got it for $25 with mouse but no keyboard

3/  After you started collecting, how many refugees were simply tossed your way or were found items?

Paid for every single one of mine, but they were starting to be worth something by then.

4/  How many did you run across and fell irresistibly into their inescapable gravitational well.

Expanded to over 100 at one point, then sold off the excess, then started to sell ones that just weren't doing it for me.

5/  How many models were you then irresistibly drawn to after exposure to the first?

Aimed to collect them all at one point, fell short with the ED branded ones, and a CCII.

6/  How many were unintended results of trades or purchases of other Macs.

Two, both times were to get the packaging they came with (128K and 512K).

7/  How many were you forced to acquire for parts?

None, my mega haul in 2011 guaranteed a plentiful supply of spares!

8/  How many models were acquired for testing/evaluation of expansion options that fell into your lap?

None.

9/  How many seem to have appeared from causes unknown.

I wish!

 

[Themk]

Wow, thanks for sharing those pictures jt! I'm sorry to hear about your loss, that's a LOT of stuff. Sorry to hear about your hospitalization too....

Do you know what actually happened to all of that stuff? Thrown away? Sent to recycling? Storage room whirlpool is how I lost my 19-inch CRT. I needed a place to put it, and my half-brother had a storage unit; unfortunately, he failed to mention that he wasn't going to be paying the rent on it > <

</done with offtopic>

It was cool to read everyone's responses. Interesting to see how other people feel about them.

 

[Unknown_K]

Hmm, wonder if any storage rooms around here are full of old macs and the owner has quit paying on it.

 

[CC_333]

1/  Did you have any left over or bequeathed to you from back in the day?
None. I got my first compact in 2005

2/  When you got the bug and set out to acquire one, which model was it?

SE/30. Got it at a yard sale on a whim for $19.50.

3/  After you started collecting, how many refugees were simply tossed your way or were found items?

At least one was gifted. A Plus which had belonged to a friend's friend. That's how I got my working HD20. The rest I found, some were free, but most were paid for.

4/  How many did you run across and fell irresistibly into their inescapable gravitational well.

Many. I think I have at least 10, but there are a few duplicates.

5/  How many models were you then irresistibly drawn to after exposure to the first?

My first affliction was at a nearby consignment warehouse, where I got a beige Plus and two SEs (intended as parts for my then-broken SE/30, whose CRT I accidentally broke and whose floppy drive I mindlessly tore apart ). Have since sought to acquire all models.

6/  How many were unintended results of trades or purchases of other Macs.

Can't recall. I don't think so.

7/  How many were you forced to acquire for parts?

At least one. Got an SE/30 from Texas when I realized my first (the one from the yard sale) would never run again without a new logic board (which has since been repaired), but I ended up keeping it intact and used mine for parts instead. I think I eventually sold that one.

8/  How many models were acquired for testing/evaluation of expansion options that fell into your lap?

None, though I got another SE/30 (the one I have now), as it had a network card that intrigued me.

9/  How many seem to have appeared from causes unknown.

Not sure. I do have an extra 630 chassis that seems to have popped in form out of nowhere, but no procreation among the compacts as far as I know :lol:

c