Not rare but unusual thread.

[gobabushka]

mint condition apple iigs woz edition with box

mint condition c64, 1541 disk drive, and 1702 monitor (not mint)

tandy 102, mint

 

[TheNeil]

PowerBook 550c

QuickTake 100

PowerCD

 

[trag]

Several Outbound Model 125 Laptops (Laptop, not the more common Notebook) with external floppy drive and SCSI adapters. Spare parts and most of the components I need to clone the external floppy drive. I still need an affordable supply of WD92C32 chips. When sold, these laptops are usually separated from their external floppy, and they have no internal floppy, making software installation, especially OS re-loading problematical.

Daystar adapter to put PowerCache or Turbo040 in Macs with an LC-style PDS slot.

Daystar adapter to put PowerCache or Turbo040 in a Mac IIcx. I hope to some day clone this thing so that it will physically fit in an SE/30. It should already be electrically compatible.

Video Vision Telecast system, but I've never actually used it. I'm a bit embarrassed by that.

Ten sets of four 16MB SIMMs for the IIfx sitting on my desk waiting to be assembled (chips and boards).

Several Power Computing Power 80/100/120 machines--the 8100 clone. These have spots for 5 NuBus slots on the motherboard, but one would need to steal the Fat-AMIC chip from a 9150 to implement the two uninstalled slots. I will probably never get around to this project.

Applied Engineering FDHD+, IIRC. I know I have the drive, just not sure if I correctly remember the name. The one that let's you use a 1.44 MB floppy on the Plus.

Three HD20 hard drives. The 20 MB Apple drive that connects by the floppy port.

Newlife Upgrade which installs in a Mac 128KE or 512KE and provides SCSI and 8 SIMM slots. That's right, 8 SIMM slots. In a Mac 512KE, one could install two 1MB SIMMs and six inexpensive 256K SIMMs and get a total of 4 MB (512K on motherboard). Back then it was a significant savings, since 1 MB SIMMs were upwards of $100 each.

Lapis Display Server Plus, external video upgrade for the Mac Plus. Clips over the CPU and actually provides a second display.

5 Brainstorm accelerators.

Microspot MacPalette II software, this is a print driver (extension) for the ImageWriter II which causes it to dither using the four color ribbon such that it can print in millions of colors. The output is surprisingly good, given that it's coming from a 72/144 dpi output device.

 

[Charlieman]

Prototype Mac SEBoxed Lisa 2

Two fouls! They are both extremely rare rather than being unusual.

 

[Quadraman]

I've got a Radius Thunder PCI in my 9500. It's not the one with the DSP on a daughter card, though. How rare is that?

 

[Bunsen]

The old Kingston(?) ADB trackballs for the Mac

Kensington. I have two. They rock.
Also snap on the following:

Gravis Mac Gamepad.Apple remotes for TV/video cards

ALPS Glidepoint ADB trackpad {x2}

numeric ADB keypad {x2, one with an integrated trackball}

50 pin SCSI DVD drives {x7 in a storage tower}

Radius Rocket 68040/33MHz card

Through The Looking Glass original disk

Daystar adapter to put PowerCache or Turbo040 in a Mac IIcx.

Some of the above thanks to members here!

Others that come to mind:

Digidesign Nubus Audiomedia II and Samplecell II cards

PCI Samplecell II

Supermac Video Spigot capture card for the IIsi PDS }

Dual IIsi/SE/30 PDS adapter for above

Radius Pivot video card for IIsi/SE/30

A /edit/ Grand Vimage LC PDS video card - I couldn't find drivers for this anywhere.

PowerComputing ADB keyboard and mouse

Black ADB Apple Extended Keyboard II

 

[Bunsen]

Daystar adapter / IIcx. I hope to some day clone this thing so that it will physically fit in an SE/30. It should already be electrically compatible.

I've had the same brainfart. I don't see any reason why they shouldn't work electrically, as they're both designed for a 16MHz 68030 CPU socket (rather than a PDS socket).

A very rough visual match between the one I have here and a loose SE/30 motherboard seemed to indicate that it would fit as is, if you trimmed off a part of the PCB that appears to have no traces or components. This is ignoring any case or internal drive collisions.

Power Computing Power 80/100/120 machines--the 8100 clone. These have spots for 5 NuBus slots on the motherboard, but one would need to steal the Fat-AMIC chip from a 9150 to implement the two uninstalled slots.

Say what? A 5 slot PPC Nubus machine? 8-o Is stealing the controller the only mod required? Apart from I assume installing two Nubus sockets.

 

[LCGuy]

Ayup, they most certainly do exist - back when they were new MacFormat UK reviewed one, and it most certainly did have 3 NuBus slots, and solder pads (and backplane slots) for another two)

 

[Bunsen]

I wonder if any made it to the colonies. I have three Power Computing machines here, but they're all PCI. Are the 8100 clones also towers, or desktops?

Oh, I just noticed you'd have to cannibalise a 9150 to make it work. Which kind of dampens the excitement. My guess is that they're as rare as each other.

 

[trag]

t;]Power Computing Power 80/100/120 machines--the 8100 clone. These have spots for 5 NuBus slots on the motherboard, but one would need to steal the Fat-AMIC chip from a 9150 to implement the two uninstalled slots.

Say what? A 5 slot PPC Nubus machine? 8-o Is stealing the controller the only mod required? Apart from I assume installing two Nubus sockets.

Well, it's never that simple is it? The regular non-fat AMIC is a 160 pin chip and the FAT-AMIC is a 208 pin chip. If it was a simple chip replacement and socket installation I would have already done it.

The regular AMIC is the one found in 7100 and 8100s which only supports three NuBus slots.

In the Power 80/100/120 the AMIC chip resides on the I/O daughter card, which is unique to those machines. To save room on the circuit board, PCC put one of the SCSI ports and (IIRC) the serial ports and the DRAM video out on a daughter card, which contains that circuitry. I may be misremembering some of that stuff.

Anyway, to replace the AMIC with a FAT AMIC you'd pretty much have to redesign that I/O card to take the 208 pin FAT-AMIC and it's a very dense card, full of components. Then move the components over from an existing I/O card (found some extras at Goodwill years ago). I expect that the needed connections from the additional two NuBus slots do travel to that I/O slot's connector.

Having examined the issue in detail, it is my belief that PCC was pretty clever. Their original plan was probably to sell a three slot and a five slot version. The three slot version would have two unpopulated NuBus connectors, and use the AMIC version of the I/O card. The 5 slot version would have all five NuBus slots and come with an I/O card bearing the Fat AMIC. My understanding was that they couldn't get Apple to go along with the five slot version, or maybe they just couldn't agree of the price.

So the only difference between PCC's three slot and five slot versions would be the I/O card. Everything else would be the same component. That is good cost control.

So, the question is, was there ever a five-slot I/O card made? If so, where is it now?

 

[Quadraman]

That was part of the problem Apple had with the clones. Instead of flooding the market with cheap System 7 compatible machines like Apple wanted, the clone makers decided to compete directly with Apple and in some cases built even better machines than Apple was building. I don't blame Apple for wanting to keep the 9150 market to themselves. I suspect had they stuck with the original plan, Steve Jobs wouldn't have been so irked with them when he returned because they would have been helping Apple more than hurting.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Somewhere, I have the original "Macintosh Bible" book. Version 1.

I also have a IIsi PDS Video Spigot. It came with Adobe Premier 1.0. What's funny is that Apple used to let you use the "upgrade" price for Final Cut Pro when upgrading from either an earlier Final Cut, or any version of Premier. I was really tempted to "upgrade" from Premier 1.0, but back when they offered that, even the upgrade price was out of my price range.

 

[register]

A Spectrum/8 LC Card. Supports up to 1152 x 882 pixels on a second screen (extended desktop). Will go into a Mystic CC. There must be tons of discarded PDS video adaptors, but it took several years to get one. Herb Johnson might have one in stock, still. Does someone offer an Envisio Quick16 ?

 

[JDW]

Dove MacSnap RAM/SCSI upgrade for the 128K/512K -- there were loads of RAM/SCSI upgrade makers, but this was one of the best.

Was the MacSnap "the best" or "the most popular" RAM upgrade for the original compact Macs?

I've been taking a closer look at these lately (primarily because I don't yet own one for my 512k). I can see that they use sockets to slip over the original chips, which when you think about it, would probably spell intermittent connections over time. Such was mentioned in old 1987 post here. (Not sure if that person is objective or not, as he appears to have been a Levco dealer.)

What's your experience with the MacSnap board, Equill?

 

[Charlieman]

The Dove MacSNAP was both popular and well put together. The SCSI cable that pokes out through the security slot is fairly well implemented (ie not as well fitting as an official upgrade might have been if it existed). My 512K with MacSNAP was sent by post for 100 miles, and the Killy clip stayed in place.

The accelerator/RAM package that I would most like to own is the NewLife with external monitor support. Magazine reviews in the late 1980s were very positive about this one.

 

[JDW]

I'm not pulling up any old info on those NewLife upgrades, but I did remember them from years past. Here's an excerpt from Jeff Walther's 2003 post about the NewLife:

I was fond of the Newlife upgrades for the 512KE because RAM was very expensive back then and the Newlife upgrade has eight SIMM sockets.

So, on a Mac 512KE you could get to 4 MB by installing two expensive

(like $80 each) 1 MB SIMMs, and six inexpensive ($5 each or free)

256K SIMMs. That added to the RAM on the motherboard took the

machine to 4 MB.

The Newlife upgrade had its own 68000 CPU on board but it was not any

faster than the Mac CPU. The guys at Newlife explained that it was

just easier to put the Mac CPU to sleep and have their own CPU on

their board than it was to arrange to use the Mac CPU. 68000 chips

were under $10 back then, IIRC.

Newlife also had an upgrade which I could never afford. It installed

in a Plus or 512KE and provided a fast 68030, memory expansion, SCSI

and video out. I really wanted that one. I think it's memory

could go to 16 MB. The Mac ROM didn't support more than 4 MB, but

the way I understood it, the extra memory became a RAM disk, and then

one took advantage of the 68030's PMMU to implement virtual memory

which turned around and used the RAM disk for its scratch space, thus

turning the extra RAM into available RAM in an bass-ackwards kind of

way. One had to have Connectix's "Virtual" to make this work.

But getting back to the Dove MacSnap boards, I am most interested in knowing the specific differences between the MacSnap 5.0 "RAM upgrade" (without SCSI, uses the stock 64k ROMs) that was made for the Mac 512k. It came in two flavors: 1MB & 2MB. How other than examining the markings on the RAM ICs can one tell the difference between the 1MB and 2MB boards?

And would anyone happen to have documentation for the MacSnap boards? There is a DIP switch on top and without the documentation it's impossible to know what the correct settings should be.

UPDATE: Here is an original Dove ad talking about the MacSnap products.

 

[shred]

I'll probably think of more "unusual" things, but...

- a bunch of Apple sales brochures from the early 90s.

- an Apple Peripheral Interface Guide (describes all the cables/ports etc - quite handy)

- a few unopened internal modems for PowerMac 5200/6200 machines (Aus spec)

- an original Apple 300/1275 baud modem

- a proper Ethernet to LocalTalk router ("EtherRoute TCP")

- [edit] an old HyperDrive board too

 

[H3NRY]

Oddities...

a video digitizer for the Apple//e that writes directly into the video buffer at 30FPS

a MacVision and a Thunderscan - digitizers for the 128K

a 400K Shugart external floppy for the 128K

a 5MB PDS slot RAM expander for the Mac Portable

a Gee 3 Stealth Serial port for the Blue & White G3

Bose Apple Roommate speakers for the Apple II

...

a shelf full of prototype gadgets that never made it into production...

a LaserBuffer print spooler which signed onto the LocalTalk net as a LaserWriter and spooled jobs to the real printer

a spread spectrum wireless base station with 68K CPU, RAM, 3 expansion slots, etc. from 1991

a LocalTalk - ethernet bridge with built-in HD and NAS

a HD which emulated an Apple//c floppy or a Mac 128 floppy depending on firmware

several boxes o'junk in the barn, plus odds and ends from working at Compaq and IBM

 

[Mars478]

Strange things:

4 30PIN Ram Doubler cards.

Apple Plaintalk microphone.

Apple Microphone (Clear)

Serial adder for a PowerMac G4.

Rev A iMac G3.

BlueBerry iBook Clamshell with Lowlowlow Serial Number.

Other than that my collection is pretty non amazing.

 

[avw]

• CardReader (Simcards and others) for ADB

• A russian (Cyrillic) & english Apple Adjustable Keyboard

• A boxed new 68030 50MHz Upgrade (including FPU 50MHz!) from Daystar for the MacSE - but I think I´m going to slaughter it for my Atari-Upgradecard

What I really would like to see are those 128MB 72pin Simms in 50NS (!) which were availaible for a short time around 2001 for my 6100 w/g3 and 2nd videocard.