Torbar's Conquests

[Torbar]

Figure doing a conquest topic seems to be a trend, so I figure I'll do one too rather than individual topics for each find.

A buddy of mine was looking for a compact Mac to hook up to his Emulator II synth since the software for it was only written for classic Mac OS, so in keeping an eye out I found 2 SEs on craigslist for $50 total.  No keyboard/mouse, untested, but they looked to be in decent enough shape, so we took the gamble and went halvsies on them.

Both are pretty much a base model, 1MB of RAM, 800k drive, 20?MB HD.  They belonged to a copy shop and have sat in boxes in storage for the past ~30 years

Popped them open, no leaking battery(they were the soldered on battery, idk if those are less likely to leak?), removed the batteries, and they powered on no issue for the first time in almost 3 decades.  Hard drives were dead and the floppy drives needed a good cleaning, but popped a scsi2sd in and was able to run 6.0.8 on them no issue.  Probably going to see if I have some extra RAM lying around and do an upgrade of mine to 4MB

 

[LaPorta]

That was you? I should have known! I’m going to check out their Classic II today. They said someone was interested in those SEs when I had inquired.

 

[Torbar]

I was surprised you didn't grab them before me!

Good luck with the Classic, looks to be in decent shape from the pictures

 

[LaPorta]

By the time I saw the ad, they said someone was already coming to look at them. I’m just glad they went to a good home. Looking forward to seeing what becomes of them!

 

[LaPorta]

I picked it up today. Likely not working properly due to caps. Looking forward to what you do with yours!

 

[Torbar]

Been a dry couple of months.  A couple of days ago I ordered a BMOW Floppy Emu which will make getting data to/from my 800k machines easier.

Also I ordered a box of tractor-feed paper from a local seller on ebay that I'll be picking up at some point this week probably, so I can use print-shop and print some cool banners on my Imagewriter II

 

[Torbar]

Finally got a Floppy Drive/Floppy dock for my Duo 270c that I've owned for 10+ years.  

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-HDI-20-1-4MB-PowerBook-Duo-Floppy-Drive-and-MicroDock-Adapter-M8061-M7781/322658401677

Guy on ebay has a whole bunch of them,  the dock I got was a Newer Tech floppy microdock, still sealed, which was a nice surprise.(not sure if they're all sealed or not).

Drive/dock work perfectly, so It'll be nice to be able to get software onto/off of my Duo, and the drive is pretty loud so I'm sure at some point it'll need a new drive/scsi2sd.

 

[Torbar]

Not strictly Mac related, or even computer related necessarily, but I got a Roland D5 synth for a pretty good price. As far as I know, it’s pretty similar to the mt32 which was a popular synth for dos games, so I got it hooked up to my dos PC and got a couple of old Sierra games to play over it, along with Lemmings 2, and there’s a patch for doom to make it compatible with the MT32.  (both LGR and 8BitKeys did a video on the mt32 for good samples of how it sounds)

Not a piano player at all besides a couple of chords(not even sure what chords they are, but I know how to play them!).  

 

[Torbar]

Couple of conquests this week,

Yesterday from LaPorta I picked up a couple of Multiscan 15 displays, one in pretty nice shape, one has some issues with the plastics,  and a couple of auto inject 1.4mb drives

A few days ago from a friend who ran a computer repair shop for about 12 years(recently closed it as he got a network security/pentesting job), he had an iMac G3 Indigo 400mhz sitting around that was dropped off for recycling like 10 years ago.  400mhz, 256mb RAM.  Came with the restore CDs and some documentation, and an Apple Pro keyboard.  Booted  right up, even though it hadn't been powered on in at least 10 years, CRT is nice and crisp.  Had some version of OSX on it, but I installed 9.2.2 on it.  Fairly nice shape besides some dust, and the handle seems like it's slightly popping out.  Keyboard desperately needs to be taken apart and cleaned though

 

[LaPorta]

Glad to have met you!

That looks like it’s in good shape. Any plans for it?

 

[Torbar]

Glad to have met you!

That looks like it’s in good shape. Any plans for it?

Was good to meet you to! Hopefully whenever is safe to do so we can do some kind of actual meetup.  

Not sure what to do with it yet. I think I'm up to 4 iMac G3s now, I might try to recreate this keynote demo (on a much smaller scale) with my G4 tower acting as a server

 

[Torbar]

Do I need another G4?  Nope

Do I have room for another G4?  Nah

Do I have a use for it?  Not really

But I got another Powermac G4 today. 

A local auction house was having an online vintage electronics auction, not much that I was interested in(mostly audio stuff/some tubes), but I spotted this.  Bid on it, ended up getting it for $30(after fees/tax it was like $38), auction house was on the way back home from my work.

733Mhz, 512MB RAM, 40 gig HDD.  Not sure if the ZIP drive works or not since I don't think I have any ZIP disks anymore.  There's someone on ebay that has fairly cheap zip bezels, so I'll probably grab one of those at some point

My current main OS9 machine is a G4 400mhz, so this will be a nice upgrade from that(Not that Duke Nukem 3D really needs it).  

It was running OSX Server Tiger on it, it was password protected, booted to single user mode and it seems like there was nothing interesting as far as files/applications, so installed 10.3 for now, and will eventually install 9.2.2.

 

[LaPorta]

Nice find! Appears to be in real good shape. Where was this place?

 

[Torbar]

Nice find! Appears to be in real good shape. Where was this place?

I can't give away my secrets! 

It was Clearing House Estate sales.  

https://www.auctionninja.com/clearinghouseestatesales/

But the actual pickup was Silver City Auction House in Meriden, not sure if they're owned by Clearing House, or partnered with them, or what.  

Facebook knows me well enough that I get ads for electronics auctions when they do them

Last year I bought a couple of rackmount Sony Betacam decks from them doing a liquidation of some kind of production company in Bristol(you can see the decks in the background of the iMac picture above). I have a couple of music videos on Betacam tapes that I came into my collection a couple of years ago, so those decks popped up at a good price so I nabbed them.

Yeah, the G4 is in really good shape, and the hard drive sounds healthy.

 

[Torbar]

I got a ZIP bezel for the G4 above, makes it look so much nicer. Also cleaned up the labels on the top.

ZIP bezel was $10 on ebay, someone has some new-old-stock ones

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-PowerMac-G4-Graphite-CD-Zip-Bezel-600-7441-A-922-3966-Replacement-Part/371985524880?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

[Torbar]

And the final part of the G4 setup, a friend was at Goodwill and texted me that they had 2 Apple 17" LCDs in box for $75 total.  Looked online and that seemed like it was a good deal, especially in the box, so I had him pick them both up for me.

First one works, haven't tried the 2nd one yet

 

[LaPorta]

Oh my gosh, I can NEVER find anything Apple-related at Goodwill! I have been looking for one of those for years! Nice find!

 

[Torbar]

Oh my gosh, I can NEVER find anything Apple-related at Goodwill! I have been looking for one of those for years! Nice find!

yeah, I was surprised when he sent me the pictures of it, and even more surprised when he checked both and they were in good shape!