Liberated a Colour Classic!

[grayson]

I saw it lying on a curb in Geneva and ended up carrying it halfway across the city, but I've liberated a Colour Classic, and it seems to be in near-new condition! I haven't booted it up to get specs on it yet, but I'll probably do that tonight. Pictures to come!

 

[MacTCP]

Fantastic!

 

[Patrickool93]

Awesome! No yellowing? I'd like a CC, but they tend to get a but to much on ebay...

 

[grayson]

The front is very slightly yellowed, but it's next to impossible to notice except in specific lighting conditions. Man I got some weird looks carrying an old compact Mac through Geneva on a Friday night (at least I was with a group of people, who now think I am the biggest geek on the planet), but it was worth it!

 

[funkytoad]

Some of the best finds are in the strangest places.

 

[macintoshman]

I love how the the classic macs look.

Have fun with one of the most tresured macs!

 

[grayson]

OK, booted it up today. It works fine for the most part (although the monitor does get the occasional reddish tint to it). It's running French System 7.5, and it has 10 MB RAM and an 80MB hard drive. It came with a bunch of software (French-language versions of Excel 4, Word 5.1, ClarisWorks 2, and Aldus PageMaker 4.2). It's pretty cool, but holy hell is this thing slow! I might try to downgrade it to 7.1 or 7.0.1 at some point.

 

[MacMan]

7.1 is a good system for the Colour Classic, much faster than 7.5. Also, the reddish tint on the monitor could be caused by a dying or dead PRAM battery - mine used to get a green tint when it had a dead battery.

 

[ChristTrekker]

I saw [a Colour Classic] lying on a curb in Geneva

Lucky!

ended up carrying it halfway across the city

You rock!

 

[benjgvps]

ended up carrying it halfway across the city

I would do the same even for one of those Apple Network Servers. Now I know why my friends call me a nerd/geek. Sigh.

 

[pee-air]

The Color Classic is an interesting machine. Yours has pretty much the same specs that mine had, only mine had an Apple IIe card in the PDS slot and it ran an English System 7.

The Color Classic is fun to play with but, as you pointed out, slow. It's also incredibly limited. It can only be expanded to 10 MB of RAM. Swapping out the hard drive can be a bugger too. Although, if you can find a 68882 to pop into the FPU slot, you'll see a small speed boost.

Probably best to do the Mystic upgrade. That involves swapping out your Color Classic logic board for an LC 575 logic board. A relatively simple and rewarding endeavour.

The LC 575 uses a 68LC040 that can easily be swapped for a full '040 with builtin FPU. The LC575 is also expandable to 36MB of RAM and runs at a much quicker 33MHz clock speed on a much more capable 68040 processor. The LC575 also has one of the fastest SCSI controllers that Apple has ever shipped in a 68k Macintosh.

 

[grayson]

Here's a picture!

When I saw it, my first thought was to do a Mystic upgrade, but I'm not entirely sure where I'm going to get an LC 575 motherboard; I'll keep my eyes open for one. I know the Color Classic was based on essentially the same motherboard as the LC IIs that graced my high school's computer lab (and those were slow even by the standards of the day, circa 1995), so I wasn't expecting much.

I will say I've had quite a bit of experience playing with old Macs in the US, and it's generally quite a bit easier there to find people who share our tastes.

Anyone know a good place to get a PRAM battery in Europe?

 

[grayson]

The Color Classic is an interesting machine. Yours has pretty much the same specs that mine had, only mine had an Apple IIe card in the PDS slot and it ran an English System 7.
The Color Classic is fun to play with but, as you pointed out, slow. It's also incredibly limited. It can only be expanded to 10 MB of RAM. Swapping out the hard drive can be a bugger too. Although, if you can find a 68882 to pop into the FPU slot, you'll see a small speed boost.

Probably best to do the Mystic upgrade. That involves swapping out your Color Classic logic board for an LC 575 logic board. A relatively simple and rewarding endeavour.

The LC 575 uses a 68LC040 that can easily be swapped for a full '040 with builtin FPU. The LC575 is also expandable to 36MB of RAM and runs at a much quicker 33MHz clock speed on a much more capable 68040 processor. The LC575 also has one of the fastest SCSI controllers that Apple has ever shipped in a 68k Macintosh.

It is definitely an interesting machine. The only color all-in-ones I've ever played with are LC 575-580 machines, and this has the very nice motherboard accessibility of those machines, but with the "cute" form factor of the 9" B&W Macs of old.

ended up carrying it halfway across the city

I would do the same even for one of those Apple Network Servers. Now I know why my friends call me a nerd/geek. Sigh.

Wow, you are definitely hardcore. The Colour Classic isn't heavy by any means, but it still wasn't fun to drag around by the second or third kilometer. Fortunately in Geneva, there was a nice brewpub on the way to, uh, rest at