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Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh - Hail to the king, baby!

Far out - you could lock me up in your attic applefreak with bread and water and I wouldn't need to come out for days :) Great collection.

 
Byrd, have you actually seen his catalogue? That picture would be 1% of what he actually has. He furnished a link a few weeks back, and the collection is absolutely mindblowing. 12 TAMs to start with, the collection would be worth mega bucks.

 
C'mon Bunsen, you know you want to!

I'm actually using mine at the moment, playing mp3's through the gorgeous sound system. I had to burn my mp3's to a CD and then copy them over to play on the TAM, which defeats the purpose but I have no other form of mass media to transfer the data easily.

It is easily my most used, highly anticipated and easy to use Mac, with my favourite System, in a hot package, and the jewel in my collection. I'm proud to own it, and as soon as I got it, I decided I didn't really need to add to the collection. Unless it is local or a bargain, I won't be actively sourcing more Macs for the collection. I probably have enough anyhoo.

 
C'mon Bunsen, you know you want to!
Click to expand...
I'll have to sell off a few things first - and some kind of Intel Mac comes before any more collector's items.

While I totally understand you wanting to keep it stock, mine would def get some upgrades:

  • G3
  • CF or SSD
  • 2x PCI riser and backshell
  • Sonnet Tempo Trio or SATA
  • ATI with DVD playback* and S-Video in
  • DVD drive - Firewire/internal hack*
  • MacOS 8.1 - 9.x
  • USB 5.1 surround

* if there is some way of feeding the ATI's output back to the internal display

 
So you basically want to gut the machine? I'm joking!

If I had a second TAM, I would keep one stock and upgrade the other. Uh oh, I've just given myself an idea...

 
Gut it? Hardly. The only destructive mods there are the DVD and video card ones, and I would hesitate before going ahead with them, certainly.

 
You know I'm kidding right? I would do exactly the same thing if I had a second one. I just can't bring myself to mod my only one.

I know they can be put back to standard setup, but I just can't do it. Plus, it suits my needs perfectly, so I don't really need to do it.

C'mon, you've got to get one and pimp it!

 
Hey Bunsen,

if you really want an Intel Mac, I'd go a Hackintosh - choose your parts carefully and once you get past the initial intricacies of installing OS X, it works a treat. Knowing you're like me, you like to tinker and it's just not possible with any Intel Mac these days. Cheap and nasty yes, but when it's one fifth of the price, you can't go wrong.

Regarding TAM hacks - I believe two-slot PCI riser cards don't work, however DVD playback is an interesting one - the TAM's optical drive is basically an Apple CD 600 4X drive with a custom fascia and harness to make it work in it's unusual manner. I wonder if a DVD SCSI drive - with similar schematics to the CD 600 drive - would go in there? One thing I would like to find is the adapter for video out (mirrored), which some 5500 machines had. The 6500 had video out as part of the edge harness.

I've seen some junked TAMs on eBay from time to time, which would be asking for a mod. The stock innards are a mess - definately seeming more like a prototype or rushed-to-market machine. The housing is big and ugly enough to put something else inside.

Seen this?


JB

 
Excellent... A bit offtopic, but the picture of your lab applefreak is AWESOME!!! I'll have to post pics of my kindred lab to yours sometime soon once I get the cubicle area finished and the rest of the basement sorted.

My question to you is?

I see you have a Tape 40SC there on your storage shelf? Do you have any experience repairing/replacing out the gumming/disintegrating rubber drive wheels in those? I have about 8 of them and all of them would easily destroy the few tapes I have left if I even attempted to use them.

I LOVED those drives since they were fully block addressable, not just linear reads. When my HD died in college back in the early 90's I used to boot my IIGS off the tape drive to System 6.01 IIGS.. Took 35 minutes but it worked and saved a few of my term papers that week.

 
I believe two-slot PCI riser cards don't work
Click to expand...
Oh. I was under the impression that there was an official option that included a larger back panel.

Seen this?

Click to expand...
Not that specific one, but that's a good'un indeed :) Here* is his build log. (Google translated)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Oh. I was under the impression that there was an official option that included a larger back panel.
Click to expand...
You'd be right - sort of. The "thin back" does not allow for the PCI riser card to be installed, or any additional cards. The "fat back" allows for a single PCI slot riser plus a CommSlot II riser - which would be housing an ethernet card. What do you do with the additional PCI slot? Ideally a FW/USB card, but mine doesn't work - found a patch though I need to test - so it's usually a USB 1.1 card in there.

I'm missing the CommSlot riser on mine :( , but at least I can put large files onto it using a USB stick.

JB

 
I had the TAM and fully loaded it with Sonnet G3 card, USB/Firewire and ethernet! But if I were to do it all over, I'd probably just max out the RAM but otherwise leave it alone. Really neat for running vintage software, but not so much for modern day-to-day tasks: A $300 notebook/netbook would be a better pick there.

 
I had the TAM and fully loaded it with Sonnet G3 card, USB/Firewire and ethernet! But if I were to do it all over, I'd probably just max out the RAM but otherwise leave it alone. Really neat for running vintage software, but not so much for modern day-to-day tasks: A $300 notebook/netbook would be a better pick there.
Click to expand...
That's my plan! I put out a request last night for TAM RAM, 168 pin 5V 64MB chips x 2 to do exactly that. It already has Ethernet, but I'd love USB.

There is no way I'd use any program made after 1999 on this machine, so I should be good to go!

 
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