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My first 68k Mac with a surprise inside

K

kd2dhp

6502
Hi Everyone.
I've been collecting and using vintage computers for many years and I finally got my hands on a Macintosh II (or so I thought!)

Several months ago, for $250 I picked up the computer, two 12 inch high-resolution color monitors, a keyboard and mouse. I had been wanting a Mac II for a long time to give me all four of what I consider the major 16 bit contenders, the others being an Amiga, Atari ST and IBM 5170.

IMG_20240510_145847.jpg
When I got it home and opened it up, I found an IIfx motherboard and 32mb of RAM!
IMG_20240510_151105.jpg

Not pictured here are the two floppy drives, the hard drive and two Nubus cards

It came with a Macintosh II High Resolution video card and the pictured RasterOps Colorplus 108, plus an Ethernet card which I don't have in front of me.

I haven't powered it on yet. I'm waiting on two new batteries for the motherboard.
 
Nice score, especially with dual monitor setup & ethernet card. The Macintosh II is also one of the easier models to upgrade. There are several adapters & accelerators to choose from. It can also support up to 128 MBs of RAM, which is an insane amount of RAM for a machine released in 1987. :)

Before powering it on, inspect those capacitors and make sure they're not leaking. The other thing you'll need are two fresh batteries. I don't think it'll turn on without the PRAM batteries installed. If you can find them, you could opt for a MeowToast which will let you use normal CR2032 batteries that are less likely to leak.

I don't know how new you are to vintage Macs in general, but one of the coolest features about them is that pretty much since their inception there've been options for more multi-monitor setup. The Macintosh II made it especially easy. One thing you'll notice with your dual monitor setup is that it works exactly how you would expect a multi-monitor setup to work today. You have the options to mirror or span the displays, and you can even control which screen the menu bars and icons default to.

Since you have six slots, you could theoretically populate it all the slots with video cards and have 6 monitors set up. Simulate a 1987 stock broker's machine. :D
 
An alternative to finding relatively expensive acceleratos, you could just drop a Macintosh IIfx motherboard inside of it (this was an official upgrade Apple offered back in the day, so it wouldn't be out of place.) Several people have manufactured new sets of the special RAM that the IIfx required. So it's no longer unobtanium or super expensive to max out the RAM.
 
olePigeon said:
you could just drop a Macintosh IIfx motherboard inside of it
Click to expand...
The OP says it's already a IIfx motherboard. Lucky break!

kd2dhp said:
all four of what I consider the major 16 bit contenders
Click to expand...
I'm totally being "that guy" but I wince at even the original Mac II's 68020 being considered "16 bit" --- 32-bit address and data buses, 32-bit registers, 32-bit ALU... you can quibble about the 68000, but there's not really much that's 16-bit about the 68020 in my book!
 
stepleton said:
I'm totally being "that guy" but I wince at even the original Mac II's 68020 being considered "16 bit" --- 32-bit address and data buses, 32-bit registers, 32-bit ALU... you can quibble about the 68000, but there's not really much that's 16-bit about the 68020 in my book!
Click to expand...

You are completely correct. I guess I should have said they they're all from a common era. It's also worth noting that both my Amiga 500 and Atari 520ST have 68030 accelerators
 
kd2dhp said:
You are completely correct. I guess I should have said they they're all from a common era. It's also worth noting that both my Amiga 500 and Atari 520ST have 68030 accelerators
Click to expand...
My Atari 1040ST and Amiga 500 are stock (except for the common 512K trapdoor RTC) and games run fine on them. I do have 030 accelerators for my A1200 and one of the A2000's.

Unless you are using newly built 030 upgrades, I wouldn't say they are that common.
 
Unknown_K said:
It's harder to find a real Mac II then it is to find a IIfx in a Mac II case.
Click to expand...
I would take that statement a bit further, IMO, since finding an original, unaccelerated, unmodified Mac II proved very difficult for me for some reason. As a result, I have 3 complete machines and only 1 turned out to be an original Mac II. If I could get my hands on another power supply and an internal bracket, I could finish out my spare Mac II case.
 
😬 Did you know that when you bought it?

Edit: re @lesca post about the II in an IIfx case. Somehow I screwed up the quote.
 
It was unclear from the listing, but it wasn't very expensive, so I took a risk. It did end up having a MaraThon accelerator inside, although I've never gotten that to work. I was able to track down an '020 and a 68852 MMU for it though and it runs beautifully with them at least.
 
Nice score. My first working IIfx was one that started out as a II. Originally was going to upgrade to a IIx, so I'd still have a somewhat stock machine, but with a 68030 chip instead of the 68020. Alas, the board I received was dead. So, picked up an fx board from one of the members here, had it recapped with tantalum caps, then swapped it into the II case, with the original Astec power supply. Upgraded it to 20MB of RAM, then installed either a 230 or a 250MB drive into it. Been about 10 or so years, so don't remember exactly what I did on it. I do know that I eventually picked up a donor IIfx from RE-PC in Seattle for $50, then moved my computer's guts to it, so I actually had a real IIfx.
 
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