Macintosh Plus

[Nico]

I just got word that an acquaintance has finally managed to pry loose a long-promised classic Mac. I had no idea what to expect from this or when (if ever) I would get it - the first time it was promised to me was about one and a half year ago - so up till now I had made no assumptions about it.

But now that the machine has finally surfaced, it turns out to be a working 1MB Macintosh Plus. And knowing that acquaintance, it should be in good shape and well taken care of. It also comes with an external floppy drive and a whole bunch of DD floppy disks. Luck would have it I also have a set of 4x 1MB RAM SIMMs left, so as soon as I get my hands on the Plus, I can immediately max out its specs.

No idea where I'm going to place this Mac though. I already considered my collection to be pretty much complete (though the Plus is the only real classic that was missing), and my cute little Macintosh corner is already stuffed as-is. Oh well, I'll figure something out.

 

[porter]

I like the Mac Plus, it was the first Mac I owned, getting it in 1990.

 

[Nico]

And here she is:



She's a little yellowed, though not as badly as these photos seem to make out. It's a little dirty in places, but overall it looks to be in very good shape. No obvious wear and tear on the outside, and it doesn't look like anyone has meddled with the insides. It even came with the yellow transport protection disks inside the floppy drives!



As promised, the package included an external floppy drive, which turned out to be a Macintosh 800K drive. This nicely complements the Apple 3.5" External drive that I already had. I cleaned and re-lubricated it, and it appears to work just fine.



View of the backside and a close-up of the label. This Mac was made in August 1986 and thus is still labeled as a 'Macintosh Plus 1Mb'.



This is the motherboard after I blasted off a thin layer of dust, replaced the original 256kB SIMMs with four 1MB SIMMs, and snipped the 256 Kbit resistor. For a 23-year old motherboard, it looks very nice and tidy, with no obvious defects.



And this is her running System 6 from an 800K floppy. The memory upgrade went well as you can see, and the machine runs very stable.

The only problem plaguing this machine is that the monitor's power connection is unstable. The screen goes on and off at random, and either slapping the box or tilting the machine slightly on its side fixes the problem temporarily. I've already resoldered the often problematic yoke connector (J1), but those solder points looked fine in the first place, and resoldering them hasn't helped. When I get back to it in a few days, I'll do a better inspection of the analog board and its connectors.

All in all, this Mac Plus a nice addition to my collection and shows a lot of promise, but it needs a bit more maintenance to get it running perfectly again.

 

[Bunsen]

A well written conquest report, and a lovely looking machine, too.

 

[Apostrophe]

It even came with the yellow transport protection disks inside the floppy drives!

The Macintosh Plus I ordered on eBay last week is scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

It's traveled about 2,000 miles so far, from Oregon. I'm worried about the 800k floppy drive with all that mileage. :-/

But nice conquest Nico! I'll stop ruining your thread with my stories...I'll revive my own thread tomorrow with pictures once my Plus arrives.

-Apostrophe

 

[Nico]

Thanks you all.

I know a Mac Plus isn't the most remarkable of conquests, but I thought it'd be fun to document it like this for a change. And I came to the conclusion that I should do this more often.