My First Mac

Salvaged Compact Macs

"Adam Ant"

Why do I call myself a "Many-User?" I am not just devoted to one specific computer type, I use many different ones. Until a couple of weeks ago, I had many popular 8-bit computers from the 80's, but no Macs. I have an Apple IIe, four different Commodore computers (which can run a Mac-like OS called GEOS), and about five others in an "Ancient Computer Museum" of sorts.

Then, I learned that the technical high school I attend was getting rid of all their compact Macs. I, being in the Electronics shop at the school, was intrigued. I managed to get both a Mac SE and a Classic. I paid only $6.00 for both!

Before taking them home, I made sure they didn't have the diabolical At Ease program installed. For the uninitiated, At Ease is a password-protected menu program designed to prevent students from accessing programs other than those on the menu. This is fine for school computers, but makes installing or running other software impossible without a password, which has most likely been forgotten since these archaic (but still useful) computers were last used.

Luckily, I found a few that had had At Ease removed. The Mac SE has mostly productivity programs like MacWrite II, MacDraw II, Microsoft Works 3.0, and Microsoft QuickBASIC installed (thanks to one of my Mac-enthusiast friends), while the Classic has games like Shufflepuck, Spectre, and Tetris installed (thanks to it's former user).

That isn't the end of this saga, however. A few days ago I decided to get a Mac Classic II, which the school had a few of as well. The only problem was, all the Mac Classic IIs the school has had At Ease. Luckily, I was able to disable At Ease using a boot disk.

The Mac Classic II, equipped with RAM Doubler, has Microsoft Word 5.0 (which, when running, takes up more memory than the OS itself!), and later some of the games from the Mac Classic. Right now I only have one Mac keyboard and mouse between the three, but I plan to get more from the school.

My Macs all run System 7.1 and have 4 MB memory. The SE has a 20 MB hard drive, and both the Classic and the Classic II have 40 MB hard drives. The SE has a SuperDrive, unlike early SEs. I don't know whether I am going to get any newer Macs, since I'm satisfied with the compact ones. Besides, I don't think the newer Macs (including a new blue G3) will be getting trashed anytime soon.

If I didn't salvage these Macs, they would be disassembled (due to the fact that it will be illegal to throw out CRTs after Jan. 2000). When I got my Macs, I disassembled a few of the other doomed Macs so I will have spare parts for mine (not nearly as bad a fate as all of the Macs being totally trashed). Hopefully, my Macs will be running fine into the next millennium, unlike the PCs in my collection.

You can learn a bit more about my collection at Adam's Ancient Computer Museum.