I know that I have a problem: I am addicted to old Macs. I can't
help it, no matter how hard I try. I have this idea that I am going to
pass away with an attic full of old Macs, and my grandchildren will
discover them one day with much delight. Visions of my future
grandchildren discovering the antique technology - and their attempts
to use the computers - fuel my excitement.
I have been collecting a bevy of old Macs and attempting to max them
out with memory, external CD drives, external hard drives, original
keyboards, mice, modems, and monitors. To date, here's what I have
scrounged:
Desktops
- SE, 3
- SE/30, 6
- Apple II, 1
- IIsi, 2
- Color Classic,
2
- Quadra 700, 7
- Quadra 800, 2
- Quadra 950, 1
- Performa 631CD, 1
- Power Mac 8100, 1
- Workgroup Server 9150, 1
- G3 (beige), 2
PowerBooks
This totals 39 computers - 29 desktops and 10 portables. Obviously,
eBay loves me, and the result is that my attic is turning into a
true Macintosh Time Capsule.
I am also attempting to put the original system software on each
computer and load the hard drive with the appropriate version of Norton
Utilities, WriteNow, Excel, SuperPaint, ClarisWorks, Netscape, Eudora,
and fax software. This older software is getting harder to find. I am
using Disk Copy to copy the installers onto a Zip disk and will
eventually move them to CDs for posterity's sake.
Sites like Low End Mac and Jag's House provide an invaluable
amount of resources for performing these computer restorations. Apple
doesn't really support these efforts, any longer - the Apple Spec
section that covered these machines was removed recently.
My weekends have been consumed with the restoration of these
machines. I seem to be satisfied only when I have one machine
downloading software, the hard drive out of another, and yet another
online with ConfigPPP checking my email with an old version of
Eudora.
If you have the same obsession that I have, then you can relate. Of
all these Macs, my favorites are the SE/30, Quadra 700, and PowerBook 180c.
What are yours?
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
