Supporting a Classic Mac 'Habit' on the Cheap

- 2008.06.09

Popularity:

About a year ago, I engaged in a little middle age nostalgia and decided to get into classic Macs as a hobby. Mac OS X is a great operating system and a wonderful leap forward, but for many of us there is a special place in our hearts for the System 6-to-9 era.

Macintosh Plus I made it through college and grad school on a series of Macs ranging from a Mac Plus to a Quadra 605, and I guess emotionally I associate these computers with an exciting and simpler time in my life.

Browsing the Net, I stumbled onto Low End Mac, as well as Dan Palka's System 7 Today site. Using these resources as a guide, I decided to obtain a few classic Mac machines to tinker with.

Blue and White Power Mac G3 A couple of posts on the LEM Swap List, and I soon was the proud owner of literally a trunk full of machines ranging from a Mac Classic to a Blue and White G3. Total cost: around $100 - considering what golf costs these days, quite a bargain as a hobby!

I fixed a few of these machines up and donated them to folks who could use them. For myself, I kept three Power Mac 7200s, a Power Mac 6500, the Mac Classic, and a PowerBook 3400c. This allows me to run System 6, 7, 8, and 9. Thrown into the deal was an HP LaserJet 4M+, which has turned out to be a wonderful old workhorse of a printer.

I also purchased many books on classic Macs for literally pennies each. I stopped by a book sale my public library was having and found they were selling many of their outdated computer books. I bought stacks of classic Mac books for 25¢ a pound. I particularly recommend the Mac Upgrade and Repair Bible, the entire Macintosh Bible series and Macworld Macintosh Secrets for getting the most out of your classic systems.

I can't tell you the amount of fun I've had tinkering with and using these machines. I have found them quite useful as well to use as writing machines for myself and my kids. AppleWorks is a speed demon on my 7200, which has a hefty 512 MB of RAM.

Macintosh Classic The Classic is also a cool machine if you're just doing basic word processing, and it's fun to see how it captures the attention of my daughter's friends. They think it is the "cutest" little computer they have ever seen.

I have even gotten into development on these systems. Dan Palka and I are working on an extension to allow older PowerPCs to use modern large monitors that System 7 doesn't natively recognize (more to come in a future article). Unfortunately there were a couple of systems in my acquisition which were damaged and had to be scrapped. My quest for an environmentally sound way to dispose of these will be the subject of my next article.

Join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, use our Google+ page, or read our RSS news feed

Recent Pioneers in Mac Development Columns

REALbasic Growing to Include Cocoa, Mobile, and Web Development, 2008.08.18. REALbasic is a cross platform development tool for Mac, Windows, and Linux. The company is working on expanding that to the Web, mobile devices, and the Mac's Cocoa.
Andrew Barry on Why REALbasic Is a Great Rapid Application Development Tool, 2008.08.04. REALbasic started as a way to give the Classic Mac OS something similar to Visual Basic, but it's grown far beyond that.
Environmentally responsible retirement for old Macs, 2008.06.13. After you've scavenged what useful parts you can from your old Mac, what's the most environmentally friendly way to dispose of the rest?
More in the Pioneers in Mac Development index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Power Mac 7500, introduced 1995.08.08. This workhorse introduced a new desktop case and CPU daughter cards.
June 19 in LEM history: 00: Mac software not 'as pathetic as it could be' - 01: Hate Windows? Get a Mac - Little payments, big business - 02: Undoing years of Mac evangelism? - 03: Back on the low-end TiBook - 06: Pimping my PowerBook G4 - 07: Safari for Windows not a slam dunk success - 08: What about the iPod touch? - Falling for the Sony Alpha α200
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM Support Usage Privacy Contact

Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Opinions expressed are those of their authors and may not reflect the opinion of Cobweb Publishing. Advice is presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all.
Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2013 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Low End Mac, LowEndMac, and lowendmac.com are trademarks of Cobweb Publishing Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPad, iPhone, iMac, iPod, MacBook, Mac Pro, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Email may be published at our discretion unless marked "not for publication"; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it, and we don't share the information we have with others. For more details, see our Terms of Use.