Macintosh 128k, but...

[jsarchibald]

Why do they always seem to have a 512k board in them?!?!

Can't complain, I got it for $80. Gave it a good clean and it looks great. Floppy drive gummed up, boots with no sound, but asks for a disk. That's 4 I own now, and each of them has a crap disk drive, and all but one have a 512k board.

 

[uniserver]

well you could always perform some ram downgrades?



I think people just really wanted to maximize their investment. If they bought a 128k, they wanted to update it.

 

[unity]

$80 is a heck of a deal either way. Did you actually verify how much RAM is in it? Keep in mind that those produced around the time of the 512k introduction would start seeing hybrid boards. Although I have only seen a few 512k hybrid boards with 128k of RAM. It would be interesting to see the sales figures for the 128k when the 512k came out. But it did apparently sell until October of '85, pretty much a year ager the 512k came out.

The floppy gum up is easy to fix luckily. I have a brand new 400k drive in box, of course it was gummed up too.

 

[MinerAl]

The 128k Mac has such a cache as the "Original" Macintosh, that people forget how useless they were by 1987 or so. If you were trying to use a 128k to actually accomplish things in the late 80s, you at least took it to 512k as soon as you could, and by '91 or so you could literally find 512k boards for $25 in the electro-junk shops, left over from people who had upgraded to pluses.

The 512k is what Steve demoed 30 years ago Friday (it's not what Apple sold, but it is what he demoed), so it's original and usable!

 

[jsarchibald]

I got one as part of a massive collection, bought another two for $100 each and now this one. They all turn on, unlike the later models of Plus that always seemed to blow magic smoke, and they all feel very solid. When I get some time, I'll need to learn how to clean and lubricate these 400k drives. I can do the newer ones no sweat, but these seem a little trickier.

I'm certainly not complaining, just wishing that I had one complete working original mac. Oh well, I'm still very happy!

 

[Quadraman]

Why do they always seem to have a 512k board in them?!?!
Can't complain, I got it for $80. Gave it a good clean and it looks great. Floppy drive gummed up, boots with no sound, but asks for a disk. That's 4 I own now, and each of them has a crap disk drive, and all but one have a 512k board.

My problem seems to be finding 128k/512k machines that don't have a Mac Plus board in them. You should consider yourself lucky finding one with a 512k board. At least you don't have to hack up the case or use a Plus bucket for those and can restore them back to original condition without much hassle. Try finding an empty 128k or 512k case bucket to restore an upgraded 128k/512k machine back to stock some time and you'll see what I mean. The buckets are harder to find than the motherboards most of the time.

 

[mcdermd]

I'm sure it's not nearly as bad as trying to find a Lisa who's owner didn't take Apple up on the free Lisa 2 upgrade.

 

[uniserver]

What is it with the 128k's and ram chips going bad… seems like this a common thing…

I am wondering if they were rushed or something…

 

[jsarchibald]

Lol, I certainly sounded whiny when posting this. Very happy either way, now I just need to find some time to clean them up and get them running properly.