The Chance 68K Macintoshes I Recently Got.

 

The Chance 68K Macs

// Somehow I got all these?

    About a week ago I was browsing r/VintageApple and noticed somebody was giving away an M0001 upgraded Macintosh Plus and a Bondi Blue iMac G3. I had been on the lookout for a 68k Mac for about a month and was very lucky to see it pop up. The bad news it was located about 60 miles west in Glenside, PA. For most this would be no problem, but they don't have a 1987 Dodge Dakota as their only vehicle. However my impulses got the best of me so I drove out the next afternoon and picked up both computers shown above. When I had arrived in PA the shift linkage to my transmission had popped loose. It was a good thing that I was in a mostly empty lot since I rolled down a hill a bit because the truck wouldn't go into park. To get home I popped it back into place and later replaced the hitch pin that fell out on the Turnpike. I had mostly wanted just the Mac Plus so I quickly posted about giving the iMac away and I ended up trading it for Mac System 6.0.8 install floppies.

Once in my possession, I immediately brought it home and tried to boot off of it, even though I was missing a keyboard and a mouse for these first trinity Macs. However I quickly realized that the disk I was given was a 1.44M high density. So that's one reason I traded the iMac. That and I didn't need it since I have a bunch of PowerMacs. Well anyway, how about a little bit of technical information to understand why the 1.44Meg disk  was problem.

    Released in 1986, the Macintosh Plus was a major upgrade from the two prior. Still lacking an expansion slot, though that would be remedied a year later with the SE, it was the last of the Trinity Macs before the switch to ADB and the abandonment Steve Job's vision of the appliance computer. Improving upon the Macintosh and Mac 512, the Plus was available with 1 megabyte of RAM. Upgradable with 30 pin SIMMs to 4MB and introducing the SCSI bus with an optional external hard drive, the Plus was truly the step in the right direction for Apple. My unit was an original M0001 Mac 128 that had the factory upgrade to the Plus. A procedure involving a new motherboard, back housing, and a drive swap of a 400k to an 800k floppy. So I needed an 800k disk to boot...

    

    Just before finding this Mac Plus, I had bit the bullet and ordered a Mac SE that was claimed to be in a state of disrepair pretty cheap on eBay. Two weeks later a Mac showed up on my doorstep, however it was not the SE  had ordered. It was instead this Performa 6200CD, which is just a cost reduced PowerMac 6200 with a 603 PowerPC. When I contacted the seller about the mistake, he refunded me and said I could keep the Performa as well. I graciously accepted since I never question a free computer. Speaking of which...

    

    By yet another twist of fate I received this beautiful Mac SE. People who know me are quite familiar with my weird hobby of collecting computers and tend to help out from time to time! So I was also given this unit by a friend. This Macintosh SE will be the topic of the next week of how it went from not turning on, to being a fully functional 68k Macintosh. I turned to two of my working Macs for parts in the process, but now I finally have the computer I always wanted. Oh and the Performa worked great. I'll have to do a write up on it, but that will come later down the pipe. 

~Ian L

Here's the 6200CD booting to 7.5.3, it was a blessing in disguise.