Got a mint condition original macintosh for $300!!!

[zastin17]

I got it. I am overly pleased to say the least. by the way, did I mention I got all of this for $300? everything is in mint/brandnew condition. Everything. Zero corrosion anywhere and besides the slight yellowing, its basically brand new. The mouse and keyboard, software, and the entire macintosh and carying bag are mint. The software is still sealed and also looks brand new. The motherboard is the old one with the purple ceramic CPU. The CRT is also one I have not seen yet and has a slightly more yellow tint to the picture. There is no burn in and the screen is very bright, Brighter than my 512ke. The picture is slightly warped and rotated and IDK how to fix this. It also has a Macsnap 2mb upgrade board which is awesome as I can just pop it into any 512k board and upgrade the ram without soldering. The old ram was upgraded on the board from 128k to 512k as removing the macsnap results in 512k of reported ram. The floppy drive is also the 800k drive which I want to replace with the original 400k drive and sled. If anyone has one to sell. Please email me at zastin17@gmail.com. I have not been able to get the hard drive to work but I have no idea how to use it in the first place so I will look into that. The clock battery believe it or not still has a charge.

One thing I thought was odd was the dark amber colored flyback suction cup which is usually black, I think. However its definitely original as all the components used on the anolog board are from the time period and non of which have been replaced. The CRT seems to be different then anything else on the newer macintoshes and is Made by Samsung. The scsi board has the rom chips which are marked "apple 84-86" which are upgraded to obviously make the 800k drive work.

Also what is the little board soldered near the ram?

Anything else I should check? serial numbers ect? 

The crazy part is the seller lost over $100 in shipping. I paid $100 for shipping and it cost over $200 to ship. Se he only made a little over $100 in profit which I kind of feel bad as he did not know how to use ebay properly.

 

[luckybob]

Every time some places static sensitive computer parts on carpet, GOD KILLS A PUPPY.

The little board is most likely a mod to expand the ram.  Not 100% on this, but it sticks out in my head, this is the case.

While not into the original mac myself, for $300 and this many modded parts, I'd say you did well.

 

[nvdeynde]

All original would be 128kb ram without any modifications to the logic board but these boards are very hard to find in working condition and with the 400K FDD.

Your logic board is upgraded from 128K to 512K and ram sockets were installed as is regrettably done with so many boards. That's also the reason why an unmodified original 128K logic board is so expensive if one comes for sale.

So basically you bought yourself another Mac 512Ke

Anyway, it's a nice bargain you have for 300$. 

To fix your slightly warped and rotated picture: on the tube's coil there's a series of small magnets. You have to turn 1 or more of them in order to get the display right but it's not an easy task. Before you adjust anything, mark the original position as you can make things much worse easily.

 

[zastin17]

My plan is to downgrade it back to 128k and remove all modifications and bring it back to factory stock. Anyone know why the suction cup of this is dark amber instead of black? Besides the flyback, all the components seem to match other 128k anolog boards of the same period.

 

[Daniël]

My plan is to downgrade it back to 128k and remove all modifications and bring it back to factory stock. Anyone know why the suction cup of this is dark amber instead of black? Besides the flyback, all the components seem to match other 128k anolog boards of the same period.

Aren't they always dark amber? From what I recall messing around with my Compacts, they are amber, but dust and dirt will definitely make it seem black!

 

[Dog Cow]

Also what is the little board soldered near the ram?

That's part of the RAM upgrade. It lets the 68000 address more than 128K of RAM.

The floppy drive is also the 800k drive which I want to replace with the original 400k drive and sled. If anyone has one to sell. Please email me at zastin17@gmail.com. I have not been able to get the hard drive to work but I have no idea how to use it in the first place so I will look into that. 

I would just leave the 800K drive since you've already got the 128K ROM that controls it. The hard drive may need a driver which may have been loaded from a floppy disk.

 

[cbmeeks]

I'm certainly no expert in things 68K Mac, but from what I've read, couldn't this memory upgrade be "sanctioned" from Apple?  IIRC, Apple offered a $995 upgrade kit for 128K to 512K Macs.

Also, I remember reading that even the very first 128K Macs had support for 19 address lines on the board so 512K could be addressed but you had to do weird stuff like piggy-backing DRAM's.  I can't remember where I read that.  But Jobs only approved of the 128K (17 address lines) so they secretly put the extra two on anyway.

Either way, that's a good find.

I just bought a 512K Mac with keyboard, mouse, external floppy and bag (not Apple) for $60.  I'm going to post some pics soon.  It is very yellowed and the case has a crack.  But I think we both got a good deal.  

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

It was Scully, not Jobs that cut the RAM allotment to a ludicrous 1/4 of its design spec at the last minute to keep profit margin up.

It's not regrettable at all that so many of these were upgraded to usable computer status. The 128k was the very first RoadApple, its hardware lamed to the point that it was not even up to doing the task of making an intro demo up to Jobs standard. An early 512k prototype was needed for that purpose. The floppy swapping insanity that ensued due to memory starvation was all but unbearable.

With 512k a Mac could almost be useful given the single FDD of its design spec. It became a truly useful computing appliance with a pair of 800K FDDs. That memory upgrade was more of a necessity, not really a luxury back in the day. MacSnap memory and SCSI upgrades along with the upgraded ROM/FDD speak of a rich history from the dawn of desktop publishing.

"Original" 128k snobbery is fine for paperweight collectors, that computer you found was a behemoth in its day and more worthy of the Mac's true place in the history Graphics and business than any closet Queen. Get it up and running, don't change a thing. If the HDD/Card interface won't work for lack of drivers, pop that puppy onto the bus of a Plus along with another external drive with an ID other than Zero, image it and learn the real history of this machine. There will very likely be an early rev of PageMaker on there.

YMMV