Manuel Mejia Jr
- 2001.03.30
As the LEM Help Desk member and
Mac Daniel writer who spends his days
answering questions about compact Macs and the Mac II series, I am
compelled to respond to the "you guys are nuts" comment reported in
this week's Mac UK column.
For several months now, I have been pondering whether there
are enough Mac Pluses,
SEs, Mac IIcxes,* and other early Macs in
operation to justify my existence on LEM.
The answer seems to be yes. Although the early Macs seem to have
been largely retired from service in the United States, I am impressed
by the number of advice requests that I get from European Mac users.
They make up most of the compact Mac information requests that I get
through the LEM Help Desk. There are also a few nonprofit organizations
here in the US that still use Mac Pluses. This is a spooky thought,
given the fact that some of these machines were built in 1986 - they
are older than some computer users.
Personally, the compact Macs, while near and dear to the hearts of
many, are difficult to service. The machines are mostly at the end of
their life spans. The same applies to the spare parts that one would
use for them. Opening them up is not easy, and one has to be careful
about the stored charge that is in the CRT. The energy, when release
into the human body, can be lethal.
I recently took delivery of an SE with 1.4 MB floppy. It ran long
enough for me to download the software before the power supply failed.
I wanted this SE because it has a functioning keyboard and mouse. I
needed those for another Mac LC
that I have, and the price for the SE and accessories was low. Since I
got what I wanted from this SE unit, I will turn it over to a friend
who wants to build a Macquarium
using the deceased Mac's shell.
While I have made a decision about ending the computing life of an
SE that I own, this does not mean that others need to do the same. As
long as these little Macs work and have operators who are handy with a
Torx 15 screwdriver, they should be kept in operation. There still seem
to be people in the world that have use for these machines and also
lack the US$1,000 to get a modern replacement.
These users are not nuts.
Manuel Mejia Jr is familiar with Mac IIs, LCs, and older PowerBooks. He
uses his Mac LC, PowerBook 145B, and PB 100 with System 7.1 on a
regular basis and recently added a Mac Plus running System 6 to his
collection. He's quite familiar with both System 6 and System 7. He
also owns the Pina books on repairing compact Macs from 128k through
the SE. You can read more about Manuel's computers in Manuel Mejia Jr's Four Old Macs.
