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My Turn

Obsessed with Old Macs

Jody Dugan - 2002.04.05

My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted articles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all things Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your submission to Dan Knight .

I agree with John C. Foster on his article on being addicted to old Macs.

He posed a question I feel compelled to answer. I started collection Macs when I acquired my first to the collection, none better than a mint Mac 128K with all the trimmings back in 1994.

In those days, I was working on a Performa 405 upgraded to the hilt with a 40 MHz processor and a whooping 10 megs of The MacintoshRAM (max for that model). But I was so drawn to the simplicity of the 128 that I had to find out what the rest of the old line had to offer.

Well, I made it my goal that if I got one machine from a particular line that I must finish by getting all the other units from that line. So here we are eight years later, and here's what the collection boasts.

Compact Macs

LCs500 Series

Mac IIs

Quadras

PowerBooksiBook

Power Macs

OthersMac TV

  • Mac TV, 1
  • Lisa 2, 1
  • Apple II, 1
  • Apple II+, 2
  • Apple IIe, 5
  • Apple IIe+, 3
  • Apple IIc, 3
  • Apple IIgs, 4
  • Apple IIgs Woz, 2

I won't go into detail on the Apple scanners, printers, hard drives, CD-ROMs, tape drives, modems, etc. that are floating around in boxes in my basement. Other computers worth mentioning in my home are:

Commodore Pet, 64 (old & new), 128, Vic 20, Plus 4; Osborne I, II; Heathkit H8, H16; Tandy Model 100, 120, 1400hd; Laser 128.

Where have I found all these Macs? Garage sales, schools who give me first dibs before trashing them, eBay, and the nice people who want to find homes for their old Macs.

All the Macs I have are in working order and have found their places all around my home. And, yes, just like a stray dog each Mac has a personality. My wife has been very . . . shall I say civil in regards to the Macs; then again she was a PC user before she met me.

Now I don't want to start a contest, but I felt responsible to face the fact that I am obsessed with Macs. And to answer John's question, I enjoy the Mac TV, Quadra 840av, PPC 8500, and PowerBook 100 the best.

May good fortune come my way when these machines are actually worth something. Then again, my next of kin may bury all these Macs with me just like Apple buried all those Lisas in Utah.

Further Reading on the Legend of the Landfill Lisas

  • Apple Lisa. "In 1989 Apple buried thousands of Lisas in landfill. Apple had had enough with the Lisa line, and in 1989 rented some land in Utah at the Logan Landfill."
  • Apple Lisa. "In the end, Apple buried an unknown number of Lisa in a landfill in Utah...."
  • Byte magazine, September 1984. "When Macintosh arrived in 1984 at $2495, the Lisa was doomed. In 1989, the last 2,700 Lisas were buried in a Utah landfill."
  • Binary Dinosaurs: Apple Lisa 2. "When the last Mac XL came off the production line in Carrolton Apple gathered all remaining stocks and buried the lot in a landfill they'd bought in a little place called Logan, Utah."
  • The Apple Lisa S.A.Q. "Sales of the XL continued into 1986. Finally, in the later eighties, pressured by shareholders and seeking a tax break, Apple gutted its remaining Lisae and buried all non-useable parts in a high-security landfill in Utah (supposedly near Logan)."

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