Inventorying my new to growing collection starting from Zed

[sunvalleylaw]

Hi all! Relatively new guy here, joining only this last January, as I started to shop and acquire the beginnings of my vintage collection. Kinda went all out for a while, and now am slowing down and considering what stays and what goes long run. So the purpose of this thread, inspired by @volvo242gt 's thread I ran across, is to track the collection from the beginning, and conclude with a current inventory, and then update the thread to current as things change. So, here is how thing started:

Macintosh SE modded to SE/30

Beige Power Mac 266 MHz, fully working, PRAM battery and holder replaced, recapped. (Buffalo G3 Accelerator 500 MHz to be installed, along with maxing out RAM)

Apple IIe (with various floppy drives/peripherals, library of computer and program literature, software on floppies)

Blue and White PowerMac G3 400 MHz. (

Incoming Second Beige PowerMac G3 with apparent nice cosmetics to possibly use for parts to build one centerpiece Beige G3, still looking for "Wings" AV personality card, working but needs restoration or will be used for parts.

Macintosh Color Display M1212 13 inch "Trinitron". Working, will need to be recapped/serviced.

Macintosh Performa Plus Color Display 14 inch. Working, likely will need to be recapped/serviced

Performa 6360 working well. PRAM batterie removed.

Quicksilver PowerMac, working well.

Apple Studio Display M4551 (first gen 15" flat screen)

Couple more 15" and 17" Apple Cinema displays with hingers in various states of repair

(Various 3400/3500, would like to end up with a couple good working machines and perhaps will sell others if they can be restored)

Powerbook 3400c 180 MHz working, decent cosmetic missing the back door

Incoming Powerbook 3400c incoming with full doors, non functional display, thinking it is 200 MHz but not sure yet

Incoming Powerbook 3500 (Kanga) times two. One with stock RAM, good excellent cosmetics, 20x CD drive, one working fully, Zip drive with broken trim, pretty good cosmetics, 160MB total RAM.


ImageWriter II times too, status other than powers on unknown.

Would like a G3 iMac, slot loading 400 MHz with working CD drive, indigo, purple or flower power, and G4 either 17 inch or 20 inch

Also will consider adding an air-cooled dual G5 (or two) and try to fashion a good server set up to ultimately reduce or eradicate reliance on the cloud. Need to learn more about that.

That's it at this point.

 

[Byrd]

That's a good lot - nice selection of vintage Mac eras.

 

[Durosity]

Welcome to the club! That’s an excellent collection. Have you done any work to recap or restore the ones that are currently working?

 

[herd]

Welcome! It is nice to see people coming into what is probably a shrinking community.

I use a G4 tower as a local file server. It hosts a RAID, it's relatively quiet and low power. If I'm going away for a few weeks I can just put it to sleep. At one point it had a 4-year uptime.

 

[sunvalleylaw]

Welcome to the club! That’s an excellent collection. Have you done any work to recap or restore the ones that are currently working?

The SE to SE/30 was fully recapped by prior owner, who bought a recapped SE/30 logic board from eBay, along with upgraded ROM to allow 32 bit clean and more RAM, with 64 MB RAM currently installed, and recapped the analog board himself. It also as a BlueSDSI v.1 as the hard drive and a Floppy EMU, and no actual floppy drive. The Beige G3 was gone through, cleaned and inspected, and battery and battery holder replaced with newer style, but I don't believe it was recapped. I am learning about that and planning to upgrade my soldering skills via a class, and an experienced friend who repaired electronics, computers, audio, etc. for the Air Force for years and continues to restore old gear so I can. and AFAIK, the rest have not been re-capped. Some have had their batteries pulled and/or replaced, and I will definitely make sure that is done in all of them. The batteries WERE addressed on the B/W g3 and quicksilver. And I though I have not received it yet, I believe it was done on the other Beige G3 also.

The parts donor 3400c may have suffered some damage due to battery leaking, as it chimes and appears (by sound only) to boot, but the screen stays black. This is on power via original power cord, and battery has been pulled.

The 6360 I received for like 25 bucks for two Performas, the 6360 and a 6116CD I forgot I had, missing the hard drive. He basically gave it to me. I had purchased one of the Apple CRT monitors from him, along with an Atari 1040 STfm with mouse and joy stick and software and adapters for modern monitors. The 6360 is kinda nice and reminds me of my original mid 90's computing experience as a solo lawyer who liked to use his computer for Myst and Launch CD-Rom music and game sampler magazines, but better than my 6200 road apple I had.

 

[sunvalleylaw]

That's a good lot - nice selection of vintage Mac eras.

Thanks! Now I am getting into making sure everything is in good shape and considering what to upgrade, use for parts, etc.

Welcome! It is nice to see people coming into what is probably a shrinking community.

I use a G4 tower as a local file server. It hosts a RAID, it's relatively quiet and low power. If I'm going away for a few weeks I can just put it to sleep. At one point it had a 4-year uptime.

Thanks! Also interesting on the servers. My hope is, as I go back and forth from Boise to Sun Valley area to be able to have a server at least in one home and be able to access it remotely to do stuff. But will need to research how that all works and what is possible as I have NEVER done any real server set up or maintenance work myself, even if I have used them as part of my jobs at times.

 

[sunvalleylaw]

Oh, I also did not mention that I have various SE/30 parts (case, analog board to restore with power supply to restore or replace) along with a purple "Reloaded Board" with some sockets and such along with a couple processor options, to use ultimately in a SE/30 reloaded build. Down the road when I can solder better.

And also a quite battery bombed Mac IIvx I picked up at the local computer recycler, "Reuseum" to use to practice soldering by attempting to re-cap it and see if it can be saved. If not savable, I will just be glad for the practice, and keep an eye out for a Quada/Centris 650 to use to bring it back to life.

 

[Brett B.]

That's a pretty good collection for the length of time you have into it. I always wanted a 6360 - that was one I never could round up in the wild.

Cool that your recycler sells stuff. Mine usually does not- he has a LOT of vintage stuff but prying it out of his warehouse is almost impossible. I think I traded him something like 50 junk PC towers for my SE/30, and it was in rough shape.

My advice for you as someone who has been collecting since before Y2K is to focus on quality and not quantity... it is pretty cool to brag about having 100+ computers (as I did) but I really enjoy having less than 10 now. Much less constant maintenance. It's real easy to fall into the "I'll just add one more LCII (to the pile of 10 LCII's)" trap where you just end up with a pile that you don't enjoy.

 

[sunvalleylaw]

That's a pretty good collection for the length of time you have into it. I always wanted a 6360 - that was one I never could round up in the wild.

Cool that your recycler sells stuff. Mine usually does not- he has a LOT of vintage stuff but prying it out of his warehouse is almost impossible. I think I traded him something like 50 junk PC towers for my SE/30, and it was in rough shape.

My advice for you as someone who has been collecting since before Y2K is to focus on quality and not quantity... it is pretty cool to brag about having 100+ computers (as I did) but I really enjoy having less than 10 now. Much less constant maintenance. It's real easy to fall into the "I'll just add one more LCII (to the pile of 10 LCII's)" trap where you just end up with a pile that you don't enjoy.

Yah, that is where I am now. The 6360 was more of a rescue just because he was basically giving the Performas away. I may or may not keep either. Same with the Mac Iivx. that was more of a cheap rescue thing with the intent to maybe use it to practice soldering/repair techniques mostly. Likely won't keep it long term. Right now, I would like to have in my actual collection:


Apple IIe MAYBE upgraded at some point to sneaker IIgs. That is enough from the 8 bit era.

Atari ST as already noted. That is enough for other old kinda first generation home machines.

The SE/30 I have
An SE/30 reload build with silly upgrades including color (I have a Bolle accelerator card and video card to use in one of these machines)
Thant is enough from the 68k era. 7.1 - 7.6 era

A Beige G3 that is fully humming and fully loaded. It seriously will be my main OS 9x machine and main 90's experience. The second may be parted or etc. in favor of one really good machine.

Not sure on the 6360. Unintended but kinda special as far as Performas go and oddly satisfying. May stay.

The Blue and White G3 deserves to be saved. I may or may not hold onto it. May upgrade it to a Yikes and use it at work as a crossover machine.

The Quicksilver could be useful to me as a crossover machine for my office work, and converting old docs I did in my law practice a long time ago. But I may just use one of the other machines for that. TBD. That was next to nothing and I picked it up just to save it.

Two good working machines from the 3400/3500 machines I have. Those are going to be useful to me in my work as off line "bricked" machines. May keep the others on hand for parts or restore, and decide.

A G4 iMac that I may do the mini mod on for use at work along with other monitors, for a modern desktop machine in an old form factor.

It is tempting to get a fruit machine if I find one in really good cosmetic shape, but they take up room so I may or may not. I started looking at good machines for too much and stopped myself.

If I can use a cheese grater Mac Pro as a home server for what I want (am researching) I may do that. But that is more for a working machine than a collection item.

I will use the displays I have with the right machines as needed. The first gen M4551 is pretty cool, but needs its backlight repaired. If I can do that, I may keep it, but I may sell it as some folks REALLY REALLY seem to want them or so it seems. So if someone wants to fund basically the rest of my collection, I would be ok with that. But thinking I would check in with legit collectors for first opportunity in lieu of absolute top dollar. And who knows if it can be repaired to full function anyway? We'll see.

Don't really need any of the other machines that I can think of. So yeah, plus or minus 10 including working machines that are useful to me.

I may also hold onto some and loan them to a local museum if one develops out of this local club I am in now. tvvcc.org

 

[Brett B.]

I am occasionally tempted to pick up a pre G3 PPC machine and have to remind myself that I had a bunch that really served no purpose since I have two beige G3's that do anything I desire from that era. The 6360, 6400, 9600, and 5500 would be ideal if I did that - for no particular reason other than that I like them.

B&W's are great, I'd be tempted to snag one if I didn't have my iMac already. Had a few back in the day, loved them.

I love the Quicksilvers too. The MDD G4's had some cool options but I guess for some reason I just always saw the QS as the pinnacle of what a G4 should be - very upgradable and still OS9 compatible.

I tried to keep just what had some sentimental value to me - this is kind of my reasoning:
LC630 - my first school auction score, think I got it in 1999
Rev A iMac - my parents bought this new and I have a million hours behind that screen
Beige G3 servers x2 - one of these I have pretty extensively modded, the other is a spare
QS G4 - I keep this one around because I used one a lot in high school programming class
LC475 - This has an Apple IIe card installed in it, I mainly keep it around for that
SE - This one was gifted to me by a good friend that passed away
SE/30 - I have a lot of effort into getting this one out of the recycler's warehouse!
Mini - actually just use this for NanoCAD and some CNC stuff, it runs my plasma table
IBM PS/2 "EduQuest" AIO - I love these things, learned to type in WP 5.1. GREAT DOS machine

And two old tower PC's - the first one is the first computer I built from scratch, and the second has a really cool Tyan Tiger dual Pentium III motherboard, 4GB RAM and 1TB RAID array. The ultimate Windows 2000 Server machine!

I have a few other more modern computers obviously but that's the extent these days. Just enough to remain interesting, not enough to be a maintenance nightmare.

 

[sunvalleylaw]

I am occasionally tempted to pick up a pre G3 PPC machine and have to remind myself that I had a bunch that really served no purpose since I have two beige G3's that do anything I desire from that era. The 6360, 6400, 9600, and 5500 would be ideal if I did that - for no particular reason other than that I like them.

B&W's are great, I'd be tempted to snag one if I didn't have my iMac already. Had a few back in the day, loved them.

I love the Quicksilvers too. The MDD G4's had some cool options but I guess for some reason I just always saw the QS as the pinnacle of what a G4 should be - very upgradable and still OS9 compatible.

I tried to keep just what had some sentimental value to me - this is kind of my reasoning:
LC630 - my first school auction score, think I got it in 1999
Rev A iMac - my parents bought this new and I have a million hours behind that screen
Beige G3 servers x2 - one of these I have pretty extensively modded, the other is a spare
QS G4 - I keep this one around because I used one a lot in high school programming class
LC475 - This has an Apple IIe card installed in it, I mainly keep it around for that
SE - This one was gifted to me by a good friend that passed away
SE/30 - I have a lot of effort into getting this one out of the recycler's warehouse!
Mini - actually just use this for NanoCAD and some CNC stuff, it runs my plasma table
IBM PS/2 "EduQuest" AIO - I love these things, learned to type in WP 5.1. GREAT DOS machine

And two old tower PC's - the first one is the first computer I built from scratch, and the second has a really cool Tyan Tiger dual Pentium III motherboard, 4GB RAM and 1TB RAID array. The ultimate Windows 2000 Server machine!

I have a few other more modern computers obviously but that's the extent these days. Just enough to remain interesting, not enough to be a maintenance nightmare.

Sounds good! I am looking into what I want to use as a server, and learning what I want out of such a system, and maybe I would use a Beige as you have in some respect, as I already have two. I didn't mention I have an old late 2014 Mac Mini laying around that runs and is running Monterey that I could maybe use for something, and also ran across a 2012 15" MacBook Pro I just stuffed in a closet when I upgraded in 2021 to the M1 I am on now. I was within a YouTube vid where some guy used an old laptop as a server of some kind also. Not sure if this even runs any more, as I don't seem to have the power cord, so I ordered a cheap one from eBay to try. But I don't consider those machines vintage or part of any collection.

We bought a couple of the fruit iMacs for home. First tray loading and then a grape slot loader, and my kids loved those machines and loved playing Pajama Sam and Lego games and ultimately some Minecraft on them. Both are long gone. But that would be why I would get one, however seeing as I have a working G3 tower (though it is having some freezing issues that seem to have to do with RAM that has to get figured out) there is no need for one other than nostalgia for a very large CRT form factor. HaHa!

If the kids wanted to revisit Pajama Sam, we could do that on the G3 or the G4 with one of the era correct Cinema displays I have and it would be close enough and take up less desk room.

I AM interested in using what I have or what I can get cheap used for current needs, as I learn more, rather than buy new things or continue to pay more in subscriptions if I can use eWaste and some ingenuity and effort to avoid expense, and wasteful buying of the latest and greatest.

In that regard, for modern work, I have the M1 MacBook Pro, which I use most, and two M4 Mini's low end from Costco, that live one in my downtown office and one in a home office. Those could be re-deployed in different ways using some old stuff as storage I suppose.

 

[Brett B.]

I used a Windows 7 era laptop on a docking station as a server for many years. It worked pretty well for that purpose and used very little electricity. I'd probably still be using it but it didn't work with a new KVM so now I'm using an old Dell micro tower instead. "Server" is probably an overkill term for it, it does run Windows Server 2008, but it basically just does DHCP, DNS and a file share.

For the pre OSX Mac environment, one of my G3's has file sharing enabled through AppleShare just so that I don't have to play the floppy or CD shuffle game. Everything in my collection except for the LC475 has an ethernet card...even the SE... I guess you just have to determine what network environment you want to use and base your "server" off that. Older Windows Server versions had AppleShare support so that might be an option - I can't remember what versions, maybe NT Server, 2000 Server and Server 2003? I just always enjoyed networking so having an ethernet card often took priority over other upgrades.

 

[sunvalleylaw]

I used a Windows 7 era laptop on a docking station as a server for many years. It worked pretty well for that purpose and used very little electricity. I'd probably still be using it but it didn't work with a new KVM so now I'm using an old Dell micro tower instead. "Server" is probably an overkill term for it, it does run Windows Server 2008, but it basically just does DHCP, DNS and a file share.

For the pre OSX Mac environment, one of my G3's has file sharing enabled through AppleShare just so that I don't have to play the floppy or CD shuffle game. Everything in my collection except for the LC475 has an ethernet card...even the SE... I guess you just have to determine what network environment you want to use and base your "server" off that. Older Windows Server versions had AppleShare support so that might be an option - I can't remember what versions, maybe NT Server, 2000 Server and Server 2003? I just always enjoyed networking so having an ethernet card often took priority over other upgrades.

Ok, interesting. Much to learn. I will definitely want access to pre-OSX stuff, but largely, more recent stuff that takes up more room, including Logic Pro projects, my photos and videos, lots and lots of documents, etc. And ideally, I will want to be able to convert older docs to be reused as templates modernly. But that shouldn't be too hard and I really don't need any network to focus too hard on that, as that will be on a case by case basis. I WILL want to have a couple of my machines running older versions of iMovie and iDVD and etc. for old projects I did that my new machines won't open. I haven't yet set all that up nor transferred those archived projects over to those machines. Probably the G3's and G4's.