Huge Haul of 68Ks

[Scott Baret]

Yes, I swore off picking up anything but obscure Macs (like EDs) last spring, but I found this haul on Craigslist and had to check it out, mostly because I wanted the Quadra 700 in the lot. I'll probably sell some of it on here, but it was a great way to fill up the trunk of my Civic for the first time.

I haven't booted any of these up yet so I don't have any specs, but I'm planning on doing exactly that tonight and will give some updates...

1. Macintosh Plus. No keyboard, but a mouse was included. I was told it works and there were several original system disks included with it (most of them look to be 6.0.x). Not sure what I'll do with this one--it looks pretty nice all around.

2. Macintosh SE. This one has a keyboard (original ADB) and mouse plus a hard drive. It's not in bad shape and I'm thinking of holding on to this one to replace one of my two dead Classics in my general purpose compact Mac squad (the kind that could be used for tutoring or whatnot). I was told this one works and I'm hoping it has more than 1MB RAM (but I have some extra from those dead Classics should I need to upgrade it). Of course, I do have an SE/30 logic board I could toss into this computer if all else fails.

3. Macintosh SE. It's pretty beat up (case has a few big nicks) and is a dual 800K model. I'm not really sure what I'm doing with this one, but it evidently does work.

4. Macintosh IIvx. This looks to be a stripped-down model, as it's missing a CD-ROM drive. There are no cards in the computer either. It has a standard Apple Keyboard II and is said to work. I may hold onto this one, at least until I get around to re-capping my IIci.

5. Macintosh Quadra 700. This is the reason I bought the lot. I sold mine last year and if there's any one Mac I regret getting rid of, it's that 700. This one doesn't have any cards, but it looks to be in good shape. It came with an Extended II keyboard. It also works.

6. Macintosh LC III. I was told this one doesn't have a hard drive. It's the standard model (not the III+) and has nothing in its slot. I really have no plans for it.

7. Macintosh Centris 610. This one was said to work. It too is missing a CD-ROM drive. It looks really nice but I don't have the room for it. This one's a toss-up. An Extended II was included.

8. Macintosh Centris 650. This one seems to be a parts machine. The case slid off during the ride home, it was said to have no hard drive, and is missing a foot on the bottom. I'll check it out later.

9. Macintosh Hi-Res RGB display. A good monitor--shame there's only one with all these modular Macs, but glad it's a Trinitron and not one of the low-end Performa/shadow mask monitors. I was told this works fine.

10. Box of assorted parts. There's a 280MB Quantum ProDrive sitting on top, as well as an Apple mic in its original box. There are mice for these Macs too. A few disks were in there as well--looks like a set of 7.1 disks (which probably go with one of these Macs), a pre-System 6 startup disk of some type, SAM, and a other utilities. I haven't really looked at the disks too closely though.

The guy also had an iMac G3, but was selling it separately. It was a tray-loader whose case wasn't in the best of shape but it did have two puck mice to go with it.

As of now I'm thinking of testing and selling the LCIII, 610, and possibly the 650 as long as I can load it up with parts. I'm not sure if I'll hang onto the Plus or the beater SE. As of now I'm keeping the monitor, 700, IIvx, and the other SE. I may get rid of one of the Extended II keyboards too.

Updates will follow later tonight. I probably won't put anything in the Trading Post section until later this week.

 

[coius]

Let me know if you need another Hi-Res RGB Monitor. I have one I am giving away. Free plus shipping and it's yours. I will ship the cheapest from 68132

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

When choosing, always keep the Mac that has an expansion slot. You might find a Radius FPD, TPD or Pivot for the SE one day and then you can start looking for the proper cards a/o an accelerator for it! [] ]'>

 

[Scott Baret]

Tested three of them tonight...

1. The better looking of the SEs was absolutely filthy! I cleaned the poor thing up and plugged it in. It gives me gibberish on the screen but does power up. I could wind up swapping logic boards with the other SE if it winds up OK. (I may test that one before the end of the night).

2. The IIvx is indeed a stripped model--it has an 80MB hard drive. It does have 12MB RAM installed and looks like a keeper. It too was filthy but cleaned up well.

3. The Quadra 700 has a 1GB hard drive and 20MB RAM. The specs are better than the Q700 I sold last year.

I think I'm going to fix the SE--once I cleaned it the Mac looked great. Off to test the other one. It too will probably need a nice bath of Endust for Electronics. (I took some before/after pics and may post them later--just to show how bad these things were).

 

[Scott Baret]

I did a quick test of the second SE. As it turns out, it does have a hard drive. It's mounted on one of those brackets designed for dual-floppy SEs. However, it does not have a second floppy--there is neither a slot cover nor a drive, just a gaping hole on the front bezel.

This SE appears to have some analog board problems, but its logic board seems fine. It also has a 260MB drive installed, whereas the other SE has a MiniScribe (20MB); this can be determined by the unique sound the computer makes when it starts up.

I think I'm going to combine these two computers and recycle the case/chassis of the lesser SE save for the drive bracket. I'm not sure if I'll use this in the other SE or not, although I would have an extra floppy to install from the beater SE.

I also noticed the ADB keyboard (original model) has a broken ADB port on its right side. It's not a big deal since I'll be using it with an SE (which has two ADB ports) but still worth noting. It works otherwise, but the SE's mouse isn't the greatest--the button is completely worn down. I swapped it out with another mouse from my closet (an original brown ring square model).

Testing the rest of the Macs will have to wait. I'm busy the rest of the week and probably won't get around to anything but the SE repair within the next four days. Cleaning the SE and IIvx (which got the Apple Color Display from my LCII, currently out of commission due to bad caps and unlikely to be re-capped anytime soon due to my IIci being a higher priority) took a long time. The SE's keyboard, in particular, was awful.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Wasn't the IIvx that POS '030 in a Q650/Centris650 case that Apple released just before the Quadras were announced?

 

[Scott Baret]

The IIvx was one of Apple's many crippled data bus computers of the 1990s. It has a 32MHz processor but is on a 16-bit data bus, making it slower than a IIci (25MHz). There were Quadras out when it was released, but more Quadras came out about six months later. At the same time, Apple cut the IIvx's price significantly, which is why those who bought a new Mac, only to see it become outdated/reduced in price shortly thereafter have been IIvx-ed. (I've been IIvx-ed three times--got my LC right when the LCII came out, my tangerine clamshell less than a month before the FireWire models were introduced--although I'm glad I got it when I did since I wanted tangerine--and an iBook G4 less than two weeks before they were speedbumped; I also have a Santa Rosa MacBook, which everyone got IIvx-ed on since it was only out for a few months before the Penyrn architecture was adopted).

The whole deal with the 16-bit bus seemed to have been done to avoid stealing sales of other Macs. The IIci, although three years old, was still on the market when the IIvx came out, and was being marketed to the professional crowd along with the Quadras. If the IIvx was running on a proper bus, it would have been somewhere between the IIci and IIfx in terms of performance and would have killed IIci sales. The IIci itself was pretty much replaced by the Centris line (entry-level Quadras) in 1993.

It almost seems as though the IIvx was designed to be a prosumer model instead of a professional computer even though Apple had just introduced its consumer Macs, one of which was the Performa 600. The IIvx and IIsi clearly fit somewhere between the Classic II/LC II low-end models and the IIci/Quadra 700/Quadra 950. I guess Apple wanted the IIci, always a professional model, to remain there rather than fall down to that spot alongside the IIsi.

Of course, the bigger question--why not just replace the IIci? It was ancient at that time and didn't even have audio-in, something even the lowest-end models from Fall 1992 had.

To answer your other question--yes, the IIvx introduced that metal case that the C650 later used.

To get back on subject about the haul, I'm opening Beater SE up this morning--don't have to work until the afternoon today so I figured I'd get the other SE up and running so I can work with it tonight.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Yep, that's what I thought. The IIci and third party upgrade solutions for its PDS and NuBus slots were the building-block workstations of the DTP revolution. That explains why Apple released a workable/relatively usable PPC upgrade for it, there was a HUGE, loyal and pro-active prosumer user base for this $-Cow.

I've never been IIvx'd, only having bought 3 new macs from 1987 on:

SE/Radius 16 (that was bundled as such with the MacSignMaker System)

Quadra 630/TV/Tuner Card (which fit so perfectly into the computer desk in the Bedroom Set I'd already built for my son that it was a no brainer) backup/ home workstation for the IIx/Radius Rocket at the shop.

Graphite G4/466 DA, for its increased expandability to replace the ReFurb Performa 6360/Sonnet Crescendo G3 466/1MB that was my main workstation and then became my PlotterServer.

All my new Macs were bought specifically for their options for expandability: processor upgrades, dual-use as a WorkStation-MediaCenter/TV or, in the case of the DA, the additional PCI slot.

I've been luckier than most, or just more conservative, I think I might have a bit-o-Luddite in my makeup! :approve:

OOPSIE! :O Does a remaindered, obsolescent PowerBook 100 count as new? I got that specifically for SCSI Disk Mode!

 

[Scott Baret]

Beater SE was an interesting Mac to look at. The hard drive wasn't on a special 3-drive bracket at all, but looked to be pulled directly from some other Mac. The date on the drive was 1994 (with the 1993 copyright/firmware) and it was mounted to the lower floppy drive on an unusual sled. The drive was powered by this really strange, thin, white power cable and was connected to the logic board with a multicolored SCSI cable. It was mounted in the rear of the computer, far away from the floppy slot. There was actually a floppy sitting on top of the drive, which someone must have shoved inside the slot thinking there was a second drive there.

The board itself wasn't original but was instead a SuperDrive board. This came as a pleasant surprise (and also a sigh of relief, as it means no soldered batteries). The SuperDrive and the board both have a manufacture date of 1989.

The anode cap also looked a bit different than usual--it seemed to be more translucent than a standard anode cap. I know this analog board has some problems (the monitor flickers constantly) so for now I've set it aside. I have a few other working analog boards I could stick in there (in fact, I have the parts to completely rebuild this machine, but given the poor condition of the case, I'm not sure if I'd want to). The CRT itself seems fine and will probably go into the parts pile, especially since I have only one other extra Revision A CRT at the moment.

This has to be the strangest Mac I've ever worked on. I'd love to know its history, especially when these upgrades were installed. Parts used to sit around for years before anyone would take them, so this 1989 board may have been installed much later in the computer's life.

 

[Scott Baret]

Struck gold with the bad SE logic board--it's got a Dove 030 accelerator installed. Too bad it needs re-capped! For now the SE is up and running with the other board.

Also, upon closer inspection, that drive bracket from the beater SE can be used to mount a third drive. Although it was not used as such in the computer I pulled it from, it apparently can sit on top of the upper floppy drive. The hard drive is mounted on the bracket's rear.

 

[CJ_Miller]

I knew you weren't off the bus for long!

Interesting - if filthy - haul, there. And congratulations especially on the score of IIci and the SEs.

 

[Unknown_K]

030 compact accelerator are allways nice to find, you could build a large collection of just CPU upgrades for compacts (except most are junked by now).

Better snag the drivers for that thing before they get lost or erased from the HD.

 

[highlandcattle]

Pictures :b&w:

 

[littlecloud92]

... or it didn't happen! }

 

[MacJunky]

Please just remember to crop and resize them, unlike cloud and kasm.

 

[Scott Baret]

Snapped some photos tonight to go with those I took earlier, will get them uploaded tomorrow. I have two of the Dove board.

The SE is now in service alongside my Classic. It does need a PRAM battery, but I have one on the way. When I get it, I will swap its CRT with that of Beater SE, since I felt Beater's geometry was far better.

I did, however, add an interesting modification to this SE--the hard drive LED is now blue. I do have a photo of it and as of now I think it may be the only compact Mac out there with a blue LED installed--most seem to have amber, red, or green for this light (Apple seemed to use red for MiniScribes and amber for Quantums although I did see an SE with a green light and a Quantum once).

Cleaned up the IIvx and currently have it in the closet. It's a keeper despite its specs. The 700 is awaiting a monitor. Everything else, at this point, will likely be sold. I still have to test the Plus, LCIII, and Centrii (I am debating about keeping the 650, which seems to only need a hard drive and has a Radius video card installed). Beater SE will likely be scrapped after its CRT is removed. (I did take a picture of it just so everyone can see its deplorable condition).

 

[Concorde1993]

although I did see an SE with a green light and a Quantum once).

My SE SuperDrive has a green indicator light, but it houses a LaCie Drive.

I could try to capture it on camera, and post it here sometime, although I do not think it's rare (or significant for that matter). But blue is pretty unique.

Personally, I've never seen (or heard of) an amber or red light indicator on the compacts- only on the external drives (my Apple SC20, which houses a Seagate ST-225, uses a red light indicator).

 

[Scott Baret]

It's picture time!

Click here for the album so far.

The IIvx has been given a bath. An "after" shot will likely come tomorrow, so check back in about 24 hours. I also need to get a photo of the other modular Macs on there.

Disclaimer: The photos aren't the greatest, as I took them with an iPod Touch.

 

[Concorde1993]

It looks like someone buried that SE, and IIvx in a garden.

Btw, I concur that Endust does the job. Keeps my AIOs happy (with the exception of my Graphite).