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Oh my goodness, such great memories. Great computer.

I actually WANTED to type school reports because we used to have a Classic back in the day.

And on a side note...Apple should bring back the smiley face when you first boot up your computer. I always liked that.

Now it's just an apple. No personality.

Jobs...get on that pal.

Yes, and both of mine still work using system 6.0.8 on my ethernet network [Asante adapter, of course] along with Quadras and iMacs running OS 10.5.3.
Apple knows how to build them!

I still have my SE/30 - and it has been opened up many times for upgrades, cleanings, fixes, etc. It got me through 4 years of college without a hiccup!

Mom wanted to throw it out... Of course I had to explain that that could never happen...

Still have my Apple IIc. First truly portable computer. It even came with the option of a color monitor, circa 1982.

Jun 18, 08 - 11:31 am Comment from: Zune Tang®

@ LOL

Asanté adapter? I'm a rabid PC/Windows enthusiast so could only be guessing here, but the Classic doesn't have any internal expandability i.e. a NuBus adapter. Your Asanté must be a LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge, right? Macs suck, Windows RULES!

Your potential. Our passion.™

And here I am, sitting in front of my new 20" iMac that costs less than *half* what that Classic cost! In depreciated dollars, no less!

Jun 18, 08 - 11:33 am Comment from: Zune Tang®

That is MACs suck, Windows RULES! I apologize for the slip up.

Your potential. Our passion.™

Jun 18, 08 - 11:34 am Comment from: Predrag

Let the geezer fest begin!

For me, I wasn't lucky enough at the time to be in a position to buy (or even see in 'person') a real Mac Classic. The closest thing that got me to a Mac was Atari 1040 ST computer, for which someone had written a Mac emulator. Back then, it was rather easy to acquire Atari and Amiga software that had 'fallen off the back of a truck' (this was Yugoslavia in the 80's), so I had that emulator on my Atari, and got to see what Mac OS looked like. There was also a copy of RSG (Ready, Set, Go) DTP application for it (anyone here remembers that one). It wasn't until 12 years later that I was going to get my first Mac (PowerMac 8100, System 7.1)...

Jun 18, 08 - 11:34 am Comment from: Mr. Reeee

Zuney…
only a true and SERIOUS Machead™ would know about NuBus!

Now that you've exposed yourself, please put it away.

Jun 18, 08 - 11:36 am Comment from: Cubert

Oh, the horrah!

(read in your best Long Island accent)

Jun 18, 08 - 11:38 am Comment from: Brian Allen

By the Zune Tang®, I don't believe PC supported networking without adding a card. And, stardard cards didn't exist at the time as I remember.

@ M@c- Yeah bring back the Happy Mac Face! I wish I could hack the firmware to do that like some people did with the G4/G5s.

@Big Mac Attack the IIc came out in 1984, I purchased 1 of the first and had to settle for an Apple III monitor because the IIc Monitor was not available till a few months after the computer. It went head to head with the PC Jr. and kicked its ass.

Thank you for playing, Zune. But honestly, that wasn't your best work.

Jun 18, 08 - 11:45 am Comment from: Tommy Boy

Anyone want my Powerbook 140 running System 7.1?

I agree with Zune Tang.

He's my hero!

Jun 18, 08 - 11:48 am Comment from: NeverFade

@ M@c and Chris,

lol - I actually disagree. I disagree so much that when OS 10.0 was released and I saw that it still had the smiley face, I wrote to Apple with their feedback area, and told them that they should remove the smiley face... and actually they did. Pretty sure it wasn't just from my little email, but I hate that thing. IMO, it looks very dated, and very amateurish, and childlike. I would LOVE it if they would create a NEW FINDER logo to get rid of that smiley face once and for all!

Jun 18, 08 - 11:49 am Comment from: Jamie

I second the motion that  should bring back the Smiley Face when you boot a Mac.

Jun 18, 08 - 11:50 am Comment from: Mr. Reeee

Predrag… who you callin' a geezer?

Those were great machines. Pretty near bomb-proof.

My first Mac was a 512K with dual 400K floppy drives and an ImageWriter printer. I had the Mac mounted on an Ergotron swivel base with a bracket carrying the external floppy drive. That shit was slick! It cost almost 4 grand for that rig! How things have changed.

Jun 18, 08 - 11:52 am Comment from: Lurker_PC

Very nice job of taking the computer apart. When this computer came out, I was still in college - that is, broke - and could not possibly have purchased this machine back then.

Okay SOMEONE has to ask, "Does it blend?"

Peace.

@Zune Tang,
You've finally exposed yourself and also why you hang out on the Mac forums. PC enthusiast, my rear! You know you are a Mac dude! I bet you own an iPhone.

I wish I'd have been lucky enough to live back in that era. Still, at least I have the opportunity to use a mac now. I do still remember, though, when I was younger and used windows 98. I swore up and down that I'd use that computer till longhorn cane out. My dad got me and my sister macs (me an iMac and her a powerbook g4) as en experiment (he had personally never user one) and boy how things have changed. Now I use a mac pro, am currently typing this on my iPhone, waited in line at the apple store summit for leopard and this iPhone, plan on doing so for iPhone 3g. My sister now uses a MacBook pro and my dad uses a MacBook, a mac mini, and an iMac. He also plans on waiting in line for an iPhone 3g.

Jun 18, 08 - 11:58 am Comment from: qka

Been there, done that.

Sold my SE/30 in 91 and bought a IICi, it's in the basement. My wife always ask's me when I'm going to throw it away. She should know better after 18 years of marriage, he he

classics are nothing. If you really want to see something, crack open a Mac (128K) or a (Fat) Mac (512K). Those had the signatures of the people that designed the Mac, including Steve.

Steve used to say, artists have to sign their work. So, the signature was encompassed into the Mac. Work of art.

Mine is in the basement, in the carry bag.

Jun 18, 08 - 12:09 pm Comment from: Predrag

to Mr. Reeee:

Takes one to know one, right...?

$4 grand in the 80's would be close to $10 grand today. How much Mac could you get for that? If it were to be one single Mac, it would have to be one souped-up, tricked out Mac Pro with dual 30" studio displays!

We sure spent hell of a lot of cash on those old computing machines back then...

these old machines are great for nostalgia. i didn't get into macs until about six years ago, but i have and love an old SE. it's my favorite machine for playing infocom text adventures on, because there isn't much else going on with that computer to distract me. great times.

Jun 18, 08 - 12:18 pm Comment from: pluki7

Mm... I can still remember turning on my dad's Classic II for the first time... beautiful memories...

please excuse me while I enjoy the trip to memory lane...

Jun 18, 08 - 12:19 pm Comment from: Ampar

The only thing that didn't fly out of the cracked case was hope.

Jun 18, 08 - 12:23 pm Comment from: British Mac Head

@Mr. Reeee

Don't forget LocalTalk. What Rabic PeeCee enthusiast would know about that. Only Die hard Macheads know about NuBus and LocalTalk Zuney.

You may as well give up trying to spoof us Zune Tang dude. You're out of the closet now

Jun 18, 08 - 12:23 pm Comment from: Spark

Still have my first Mac Plus!

Good old day!?! You can have them. Remember the boot floppy and then put in the application disk to do your work and then the file floppy?

Give me Mac OS X anytime.

Jun 18, 08 - 12:33 pm Comment from: Zune Tang®

Everybody just settle down. I'm just zapping your PRAM.

Your potential. Our passion.™

MacTracker/My Models shows:

Macintosh 128k (sold at a garage sale about 15 years ago)
Macintosh 512k (In storage. Still runs)
Macintosh SE/30 (Fate unknown, but I learned Multicalc on that one)
PowerBook 140 (Sold at a garage sale in 2004. Still ran)
PowerBook G3 Series (Failed screen hinge. In attic. Still runs)
PowerBook G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) (In daily use)
iMac G5 17-inch (Ambient Light Sensor) (ditto)
MacBook Pro (15-inch Core 2 Duo) (In for DVD burner replacement, but otherwise fine.)

Like so many other things, the first ones made the biggest difference in my life.

Jun 18, 08 - 12:43 pm Comment from: Aldebaran

Hey "old timer"!

I still have my Mac 128K -- the original Mac -- in its blue nylon carrying case too (so called "Mac Classic" actually came later). I got rid of the original Imagewriter printer some time ago, but will never part with this gem. I recently found the original sales receipt, and I have the original System 1.0 floppies too. They were full system *and* applications on a single 400K floppy disk. Hey, I'm not that much of a pack rat.

My grandmother bought it for me for my undergrad college graduation present in fall of 1984 (do the math and that will date me quite accurately).

I've always wanted to connect it up to my current home network but never knew how. Any resources out there for that info?

Jun 18, 08 - 12:46 pm Comment from: Aldebaran

At least I could use it as a lamp in my home office and run Flying Toasters screen saver on it.

Jun 18, 08 - 12:49 pm Comment from: Me In LA

nOObs.
Unless you made an AppleTalk network using PhoneNet™ connectors and lots of RJ-11, you are modern kids

I hauled my 512ke home and back every day to UCLA.
I then built a small lab with one Mac and a LaserWriter printer.
The 30-seat IBM lab - donated (free) sat empty while my little Mac setup had a sign-in sheet.

Those were the days when it was Apple vs Big Blue - IBM.
What ever happened to them?

Jun 18, 08 - 01:02 pm Comment from: oh no my shorts

> I'm just zapping your PRAM.

Man, it's been a looong, long time since I had to do Cmd-Opt-P-R.

There were a bunch of other startup key combos. The coolest was Cmd-Opt-Shift-Del, which would cause the Mac to bypass the internal SCSI drive and boot from an external drive.

I used to have a "Maintenance" external hard disk that I'd plug in to a user's Mac when it was having problems. Boot from the Maintenance drive, fix the problem, and off they go. Simple! And nothing in the PC world even came close. Still doesn't.

I had a Mac Plus and Imagewriter II printer from shortly after I started college in 1988 until around 1996 shortly after my mom bought a 7200 in 1995. Then I worked in a store where they used Color Classics for cash registers and I finally got my Power Tower Pro 225 in July 1997 right before I went to MacWorld and saw the Keynote where Steve Jobs said that Apple was done with clones. Alas, if I had just waited until the end of that Summer to buy my birthday present, I would have gotten an 8600 0r 9600. Over the next 4 years, I got my hands on various macs as they were being replaced at work. Also had a couple of Macinsteins ie - an 8600 Mobo in a 7600 box. Finally bought my Quicksilver 933 in 2002 which I used until last August when I replaced it with the 24 inch 2.8 GHz iMac that I am typing this on. As for my old Mac Plus, I gave that to an artist friend of mine to turn into an aquarium or a stereo speaker stand. I'm sure he will get to it eventually.

NuBus was a breath of fresh air ... an astounding example of connectivity during the dark days of computing.

And never in the history of desktop computing was the speed so different between ALL computers on the market and the Macintosh II Fx.

It was a frigging gorilla. And at the low, low price of about 18,000 bucks.

It reminds me of my first computer, a Mac Plus. That game Submarine absolutely rocked. Oh well I guess that's one game I'll never get to play again. Ah the memories of OS6.

Re: Smiley Face. Perhaps Apple should give people the choice of what image they see on start-up.

Personally, I want to see the scene from Jurassic Park where the T-Rex eats the lawyer!

Another old timer here. I got 128K original Mac as a graduation present (PhD) in 1984. It got an external floppy drive shortly, and I did the cut-the-chips-off-the-motherboard RAM upgrade. This was described in Dr. Dobbs Journal, and it worked like a charm. My friends and I upgraded over a dozen machines and never lost a patient.

Jun 18, 08 - 01:55 pm Comment from: Micro Me

@ Spark. "Still have my first Mac Plus!"

Ditto. And a Mac 512. Ah, memories. But I'll stick to using my 24" iMac.

Jun 18, 08 - 02:14 pm Comment from: Mr. Peabody

They were a pain in arse to pack up, but I sold a couple of these oldies but goodies last year on eBay, along with a Color Classic, and made out like a bandit. I actually never wanted to sell the Color Classic, but the need for closet space superseded by need of a vintage Mac. And they all still work.

Jun 18, 08 - 02:16 pm Comment from: BC Kelly

And, on the ol' 512 (SE?) still have (somewhere in store room, along with the external floppy, 2 of them maybe, forget now) ran Microsoft Works 1.0 - which believe was the first 'big time' application Microsoft put out, and was only for the Mac.

Really was a helluva database program - and seems to be not that much different from the latest Appleworks (still chugging along) and combined with a dot matrix printer, made my life/work a LOT easier way back when in the 'dark ages'

Wow, how far we've come in 20 years

Just imagine the next 20

We going to Change the World™




BC

I had one of those -- bought it in 1984.

Hmmm, actually I had the original Mac, not the classic.

I still get angry when I think about my old MacPlus. I got it my senior year in college. Several years later, after getting an LCIII, I gave the old MP to my sister when she was in college. She ended up taking it with her after graduating and moving to Texas. When I asked her about it a few years later, she said she had let 'some guy' borrow it. She didn't remember who, when, where... so it was so long, Mac. :-(

MW = decided (as in, I 'decided' never to let my sister borrow anything ever again!)

hell I made a lamp with my Macintosh SE http://www.ialex.es/El_iBlog/Blog/Entradas/2008/6/18_iLamp____.html and it looks just amazing perfect for my office