Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like?

[commodorejohn]

It's an interesting system - from that period where new computers were branching out into this GUI thing, but before everything became either Windows or Unix derivatives. You can get a basic A500/A2000 setup pretty cheap, should you ever want to give it a shot.

 

[Charlieman]

The Amiga would like a word with you.

I worked with a bunch of Mac programmers in the 1980s who wibbled with an Amiga at home. The Amiga and Atari ST were great computers but they were an even smaller market than the Mac. There was just no space in the commercial market for them.

 

[James1095]

The Amiga is a fascinating system. At the time, it had excellent graphics and sound, roughly equivalent to a Sega Genesis game console, the A500/600/1000/1200 boxes even sharing the same CPU. Because of these capabilities, it was a popular home computer with a LOT of great games. The other application they were particularly good for was video since they had native support for NTSC and PAL video formats. A great many TV studios used Amigas for video overlay graphics and video switching, right up until the transition to HD.

These days there is a really cool open source clone of the Amiga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimig

I built one of these recently and have a few extra blank PCBs left if anyone is interested. This is NOT a beginner project though as it's almost entirely surface mount, including the 208 pin FPGA. It took me several hours to assemble it by hand. Ready-made units are available but they're a bit spendy. There is also a build that will run directly on the Altera DE2 FPGA dev board, that one uses a soft core 68000 implemented within the FPGA while the original Minimig uses a real 68k chip.

 

[uniserver]

wow i want to build my self an Amiga now. thanks james

 

[volvo242gt]

All I remember was playing around with one at the old Micro Computer Systems store in Lynnwood, WA, and having one of the salespeople do a remote desktop of someone else's Mac Plus, then, that person shutting the Mac II down from their Plus. Was back in November 1988. Also remembered looking at the price tag and thinking that someone could easily pick up a nice 1983 Volvo 240 for that amount ($8400 or so with all the peripherals)...

-J

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Before the Mac II, the world was Black & White, for all practical purposes. Grayscale was a revelation and color of any quality was almost unheard of, the Mac II series was the breeding ground for the evolution of high end color graphics solutions. Digital_Darkroom shipped for grayscale the same year as the Mac II, but Photoshop 1.0 was still three years away.

The Amiga would like a word with you.

Yup, with Deluxe Paint, one of the first full-color graphics editing applications - a full two years before the Macintosh II came out.

 

[stretch]

We used to buy wire wrap boards (can't remember the vendor) with existing Nubus interface circuitry that provided access to the address/data bus and control lines. We built our own controller boards and the software group wrote unique drivers using MPW. Latch 8 bits, shift, repeat as necessary then process the assembled word. Apple was amazed that we could do real time simulation with a Mac II.

Those were the days.

 

[Cosmo]

Macintosh II feels like (now long time afterwards) going back in a sense to the concept of Apple ][ - with the expansion slots and all.

And oh man, it was B I G .

 

[olePigeon]

Was it notoriously big?

 

[Charlieman]

It is similar size to an IBM PC XT or AT unit. What made it look really huge was perching the 13"/14" AppleColor High-Resolution RGB Monitor on top.

 

[uniserver]

I remember my wood shop class, up on the top shelf was a yellow/dusty ( even then ) 1995

Was a Mac II, not sure if it was a II, IIx, IIfx

but it was old and big, I remember. - thats about it haha.

I'm pretty sure in his office (thinking back) he had a IIcx/IIci because it was laying flat, on its side. He opened it up to show me the HD,

and it had one of those Double height 3.5" IBM 160mb HD's in there.

One day in lab, I was chilling talking to him about my 286 IBM PS/2 Micro channel, He was praising Micro Channel.

Saying how Awesome it really is and way ahead of its time.

 

[68kbits]

How do these Macintosh II series monsters hold up over time from Caps and Batteries?

They have two batteries don't they?

Do they have a high success rate after new battery and recap?

 

[uniserver]

pretty sure if the cap goo gets too bad some traces get eaten. pretty common with the Mac II. i don't know the details though.

other then i have a dead mac II and dead mac IIx board.

I have recapped many IIfx boards for people, They always seem to have good success after a cap job.

 

[applefreak]

i remember testing Photoshop 0.63 .....

the 0.63 version still works on my G5 quad under classics

my apple computers - list

 

[ScutBoy]

We got a II, and a bunch of SEs at the ad agency I worked at at the time. These supplemented the Pluses we had at the time.

Loved the speed of the II, but I remember thinking from a visual standpoint it was a boring rectangular box.

In my opinion the /// and the Lisa are the best looking Apple products.

 

[24bit]

Sure I recall!

For me the MacII was among the best Apple ever made.

I could not afford a new one and when I finally could buy a used one, there was plenty of software for it.

It was maxed out with PS2 RAM and a Daystar Universal Power Cache. Had a PLI SCSI HBA and ethernet card too.

Some work was done with that Mac. The two VARTAs were still good when the PSU finally kicked the bucket.

As for the A2000B it was very expandable too, but Amiga video was 50Hz PAL compatible in Europe.

Good enough for gaming, but crap for DTP or other serious work. DigiPaint still was ahead of its time, but HAM (hold and modify) was only a niche solution.

 

[FireBlade93RR]

the IIfx was the first mac i owned, moving on from the IIgs,

that's when i got to try out my 3D debut with raytracer and after that infini-D, the good old days, it quit working and i moved on to a performa 630.

 

[IIfx]

How do these Macintosh II series monsters hold up over time from Caps and Batteries?

My IIfx has mostly tantalum solid-state caps from the factory (Fremont CA 1992), so I assume that the only part that will need recapping will be the PSU (its a Sony though, so probably uses high quality Japanese caps) and the two rather large radial electrolytic caps on the logic board some time far in the future.

Looking at a photo of the II/IIx logic board, it doesnt look like any of the caps are surface mount so they should be one of the easier macs to recap.

:beige:

 

[mcdermd]

My IIx has the standard surface mount aluminum electrolytics.

 

[volvo242gt]

It seems that the II board used old school electrolytics that weren't surface mount, the IIx, the aluminum SMT electrolytics, then the IIfx could use either. The II also had soldered ROM chips with a ROM SIMM header underneath, whereas the IIx/IIfx had ROM SIMMs. Then, battery-wise, II's had them soldered, as did early IIx machines. Later IIx and the IIfx used battery holders.

-J