Another eBay conquest, 3 more compact Macs... (aka Mac Haul 2)

[joshc]

Hi everyone

This is a little more interesting than my last conquest (I hope!). On the auction, it said that there were two Mac Plus and an SE/30.

So, yep, there are 2 machines which say Plus 1MB on the rear, and an SE/30.

However...on further inspection at one of the Plus models, it has a 128k serial number, and doesn't say Plus on the front. Is this some sort of weird 128k that was sold with a Plus upgrade, or? Hopefully someone can shed some light on what I've just bought!! :embarrassed:

Also, can anyone tell what expansion card is in the SE/30? Looks like a network card to me.

In terms of the state of these 3 machines, I've been told that one of the Pluses (or maybe 128k......) does power on, one has the checkboard problem, and the SE/30 powers on but has no video.

I have a keyboard for the Plus, but no mouse - a quick look on eBay and the only 128k/Plus mice available are in the USA for $$$, so I might have to wait it out to get a mouse...

Thanks in advance! :b&w:

 

[joshc]

OK, I've just tested all 3...and all 3 power on but NONE are showing any video at the moment, the two Plus models chime when they boot, and the SE/30's hard drive spins up and sounds OK but there is no chime from the SE/30 (guessing bad capacitors have killed the audio). So I think these are definitely salvagable but I'm guessing at the moment that they might have bad capacitors on their analog boards as well...

My work is definitely cut out for me, I now have 6 compact Macs to repair...! xx(

 

[joshc]

OK, a quick Google revealed this, so I think thats what happened with the M0001 Mac...

"Finally, a Mac 128K could be upgraded to a Macintosh Plus by swapping the logic board as well as the case back (to accommodate the slightly different port configuration) and optionally adding the Macintosh Plus extended keyboard."

I wonder how much Apple charged for this upgrade back then, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not far off the cost of a new Mac at the time.

 

[olePigeon]

Probably the cost of a new Mac less the front bezel, chassis, and CRT.  Presumably you had to buy an 800k floppy drive for it.

 

[Gorgonops]

Presumably you had to buy an 800k floppy drive for it.

I think technically the way they priced the upgrade is a "prerequisite" for the Plus upgrade was having the 800k floppy drive upgrade which also included the 128k ROMs, so technically for a full Plus upgrade you were buying two SKUs at once. The drive upgrade was surprisingly affordable as Apple products go at "only" $299, but I don't remember what the Plus board part of it cost. (And google-fu is failing me.) There's one reference out there that the trade-in cost for a 512ke (which already has the drive) was $799, so maybe it was $1100?

 

[Juror22]

If these were transported at all (shipped, packaged, carried) you might want to check the video connector (and other connectors) to make sure it is plugged in before you declare no-joy on the video. I have gotten a few compact macs that were disconnected at the CRT and simply making sure it was properly plugged in 'restored' the video.  Obviously it won't fix the one with the checkerboard pattern.

 

[joshc]

Thanks @Juror22 it's a good shout because on the eBay item, there is a photo of the Plus with its video working fine, so maybe something was dislodged in transit in my car... :undecided:

Thanks for finding out the pricing info @Gorgonops I'm sure with enough Google searching we would probably find the original documentation for Apple's OEM upgrade options.

I sure hope it has a 800K drive, otherwise I have the 'fun' of finding or creating 400K disks...... :O

 

[Dog Cow]

"Finally, a Mac 128K could be upgraded to a Macintosh Plus by swapping the logic board as well as the case back (to accommodate the slightly different port configuration) and optionally adding the Macintosh Plus extended keyboard."

I wonder how much Apple charged for this upgrade back then, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not far off the cost of a new Mac at the time.

There were two upgrade packages for the Mac 128K and 512K:

1.) 128K ROM + 800K drive. You kept your original motherboard. This cost about $300.

2.) Mac Plus logic board upgrade. This required the first upgrade (ROM + disk), and came with the Mac Plus rear case. This upgrade cost $600 and $800 for the 512K and 128K Mac, respectively.

I sure hope it has a 800K drive, otherwise I have the 'fun' of finding or creating 400K disks...... :O

400K disks aren't all that bad. If you have a machine or a drive that can write double-sided 800K disks, then 400K disks will be no problem.

 

[LaPorta]

Dog Cow, I may not be understanding this, but how could a Mac 128k with 128k RAM be able to support the 128k ROMs without also needing more RAM?

 

[Dog Cow]

Dog Cow, I may not be understanding this, but how could a Mac 128k with 128k RAM be able to support the 128k ROMs without also needing more RAM?

It does. I've tried it. You get a 128Ke, and you can boot from an HD20 and do HFS stuff. I've seen a few mentions of the "128Ke" configuration from 1980s-era Usenet posts and other sources, showing that it was something people did back then.

I'm still not entirely sure if this was an official Apple-supported upgrade. I do know that Apple was pretty strict with upgrades, required the dealer to do the upgrade, and made him return the old ROMs to Apple. So probably it was an Apple-sanctioned upgrade, just not a very common one in 1986. Regardless, it's an upgrade that some people did, and that does yield a more functional Mac 128K.

I haven't done any in-depth analysis on system heap usage between the 64K ROM and 128K ROM in a Mac 128K, so I can't give you any more details on why it works. It just does. ;-)

 

[olePigeon]

Wasn't the original Mac demo that Steve Jobs did a "128Ke" because it didn't have enough ram to run the presentation?

 

[Dog Cow]

Wasn't the original Mac demo that Steve Jobs did a "128Ke" because it didn't have enough ram to run the presentation?

Not quite. It had the original 64K ROM (which was frozen a few months prior, in September 1983), but it had 512K of RAM.

 

[joshc]

Thanks for the extra info @Dog Cow I've not had time to examine the board inside the 128K to see if its a Plus board or not, unfortunately thats the one which powers on but has no video.

I opened up the SE/30 and Plus and jiggled things around a bit and now the video works on both of those, but neither boot and the floppies seem to have trouble reading disks and wont eject them properly either.

Progress, kind of, slow progress...

I have ordered a mass of things from Amazon so that I can do proper repairs on all my Macs... SMD soldering/desoldering station, lots of tools, etc etc....stay tuned for more photos/videos!

 

[Gorgonops]

and that does yield a more functional Mac 128K

My vague recollection is that a "128ke" actually has a few hundred bytes less free RAM, and it's enough to prevent it from running... one of these two, MacPaint or MacWrite. But I've never tried it so I can't say.

I'm *extremely* skeptical that Apple ever in any way signed of on this as an official upgrade and would be happy with an official service center doing it, but there was a thriving "gray market" for Mac upgrade parts despite Apple's attempts to rigidly control the supply, so I'm not at all surprised it existed in the wild despite that. Although, honestly, I don't see the point; if you're going through the trouble of having your Mac cracked for the ROM/disk upgrade you might as well have a third-party 512k RAM upgrade soldered in there while you're at it.
 

2.) Mac Plus logic board upgrade. This required the first upgrade (ROM + disk), and came with the Mac Plus rear case. This upgrade cost $600 and $800 for the 512K and 128K Mac, respectively.

I thought that Apple probably charged a different price for upgrading a 128k vs. a 512k, but not sure enough to say. So, yes, the full from-zero upgrade of a 128k up to a Plus was just shy of $1,100, which while kind of painful was still well short of the price of a new Mac. (The Plus cost $2,600 at introduction.) A thing worth considering, though, is there's a less-than-zero chance that someone  upgrading their 128k to a Plus may have *already* ponied up for a 512k upgrade. Apple initially charged $999 for that, so worst case it's possible that someone could have ended up paying a total of $2,499 + $999 + $299 + $599 + $129 (keyboard upgrade) =  $4,525 for their Macintosh Plus if they stepped through every iteration.
 

Thanks for the extra info @Dog Cow I've not had time to examine the board inside the 128K to see if its a Plus board or not, unfortunately thats the one which powers on but has no video.

It has round serial ports, so it's a Plus board. You can't swap boards without swapping case backs unless you're planning to do some plastic surgery.

 

[Dog Cow]

 Although, honestly, I don't see the point; if you're going through the trouble of having your Mac cracked for the ROM/disk upgrade

Agreed. It's a rather silly penny-pinching move to only go half-way. Here's a Usenet post from 1988 mentioning a Mac 128Ke. Note that even the poster then had never heard of this configuration.

I thought that Apple probably charged a different price for upgrading a 128k vs. a 512k, but not sure enough to say.

My source was this Usenet post from January 1986. I haven't verified the information in that post with any other source.

 

[Gorgonops]

Agreed. It's a rather silly penny-pinching move to only go half-way. Here's a Usenet post from 1988 mentioning a Mac 128Ke. Note that even the poster then had never heard of this configuration.

Looking at that Usenet post I think the critical part is it's mentioned in the context of an accelerator/expansion board that included its own RAM onboard. (I'm going to hazard a guess the board they're describing is either the MacRescue or the same thing wearing another beard and mustache.) Boards like that would need the 128k ROMs to drive the SCSI controller they add (among other things) so it would be a prerequisite to have them, but you wouldn't actually be using the machine in a "128ke" configuration.

(It's notable that the ROMs in that picture of a MacRescue I pointed at appear to be EPROM pirates. No doubt that sort of thing was pretty rampant among... less than reputable... repair/upgrade shops.)

 

[Dog Cow]

Boards like that would need the 128k ROMs to drive the SCSI controller they add (among other things) so it would be a prerequisite to have them, but you wouldn't actually be using the machine in a "128ke" configuration.

Right, but that's just one source mentioning a 128Ke. There are others that I've come across, but like I said, it's scarcely mentioned.

 

[joshc]

A quick update...

I struck GOLD with the 'Point of Sale' SE/30!!

Opened it up...and here's what I took out on my first night of 'restoration'.



Yep, a socketed Daystar 40MHz 68030 PowerCache accelerator card and what appears to be 32MB RAM on the logicboard, plus an Asante Ethernet card.

It was all pretty dusty, and I forgot to take a photo of the initial state (woops) though I was doing lots of iPhone video footage as well, I cleaned the logicboard and Daystar card with an anti-static brush to get rid of the worst of the dust. I haven't done any 'washing' of the boards yet and will need to be very careful as there is an OEM quality assurance or some sort of other sticker on the logicboard that I want to retain.



I really wasn't expecting this to have a Daystar card or more than 8MB RAM, the guy who sold it definitely had no idea he was selling me a goldmine for a very cheap price!

While I was at it, I also cleaned the floppy drive, it might need more work after a good 30 mins of cotton swabbing with isopropyl alcohol its looking a lot better, the auto inject & the eject seem to work smoothly now.



I have ordered a bunch of other stuff to help me with the Plus & upgraded 128K/Plus, I found a Plus mouse on eBay and an external 800KB floppy drive (both quite pricey but oh well...), just waiting for those to arrive in the post.

More to come soon!

 

[Crutch]

 Wow, nice score. One of those socketed Daystar boards sold on eBay for $1200 recently. I suspect that will actually run at 50MHz by the way. Couldn’t read what’s on your clock can in the picture, though. Anyway that SE30 will feel blazing fast.