The Mac Plus 30 Years On

Prior to 1986, the best Mac had 512 KB of memory with no expansion path, a 400 KB floppy drive, and no standard way of connecting a fast hard drive. The Mac Plus, introduced on January 16, 1986, changed all that.

Memory Upgrades: Mac Plus

The Mac Plus shipped from the factory with 1 MB of system memory installed in the form of four 256 KB SIMMs. It can be upgraded to 2.5 MB and 4 MB configurations using 150ns or faster 1 MB 30-pin SIMMs.

Overclocking a Compact Mac

Many Mac models can be “chipped” to run at a higher speed, but none of the compact Macs can. That said, some can be upgraded with third-party accelerators, so you’re not necessarily stuck with the original CPU speed – although finding those upgrades nowadays may be difficult.

The 25 Most Important Macs

2009 – Others have published their thoughts on the Best Mac Ever, the 10 Best Macs, and the 25 Best Macs, but I’m taking a different approach. I want to identify the 25 most important Macs ever, clones included. (In some cases, I’ll lump together two or more models that were introduced simultaneously.)

It All Started with a Mac Plus in the Classroom

In 1993, I was 11 years old. My experience with Macs had amounted to whatever time I could get alone with the Mac Plus sitting in the back of the classroom. I didn’t do much then. Mostly I would just play games like Shufflepuck Café or Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? I had no […]

To Err Is Human, to Correct Divine

In my previous article, I discussed the care and maintenance of the venerable Mac Plus. Well, I displayed my imperfections as a Triassic Mac user. I know a number of things about old Macs. However, I am a writer, not an engineer (with apologies to the late DeForest “Bones” Kelley).

Care for a Mac Plus

Of all of the Triassic Macs, the Mac Plus has the most sentimental value among the Low End Mac community. For many 1980s computer users, it was the first Mac they ever owned. For others, it was the first device they used as a replacement for the venerable typewriter.

Mac Plus Benchmarks

The Mac Plus uses the same 8 MHz 68000 CPU found in the original Macintosh and the 512K Fat Mac. The attached hard drive is a 160 MB Quantum, and the computer has 4 MB of memory. Because it is an older design, the Plus is generally considered to be about 15% slower than the 8 […]

Still Useful after All These Years: The Mac Plus

1998: The original Macintosh of 1984 was an incredibly cool computer – but impractical. With just 128 KB of RAM and a single 400 KB floppy drive, using it was an exercise in frustration involving a lot of disk swaps. A second floppy drive made the Macintosh a much more practical computer, but it was […]