Skip to main content
Home Forums Not rare but unusual thread. Not rare but unusual thread.
Thread

Not rare but unusual thread.

Not rare but unusual thread. Peripherals 69 posts Mar 15, 2008 — Nov 4, 2011
Post your unusual things you have.

Gravis Mac Gamepad.

Ment to be ADB but has a serial? type connector. Must be in the wrong box but looks the same as the picture.

Powerlink Presentor - a Duo microdock with composite (TV) video out

An IR wireless ADB keyboard with an integrated pointing device.

Set of 3 upgrades for the original tray load G3 iMac that give serial, ADB and video output

feetie pj's

and a construction road horse blinky light.

Rarity is subjective. If you live in silicon valley, a Mac 128K is not rare. But everywhere else is different. A few favourites:

Dove MacSnap RAM/SCSI upgrade for the 128K/512K -- there were loads of RAM/SCSI upgrade makers, but this was one of the best.

MacCharlie box, of course. Weird and brilliant, but possibly rare.

Orange PC cards. Great fun to play with because you have to refresh both your old Mac and old DOS skills. Note: I'm looking for the Windows 95/98 and NT driver packages for the Pentium PC cards.

Mac Recorder -- sound input for 68K Macs. Interesting to use for about five minutes unless you have a project that requires it.

Accelerators that use the IIci cache slot (or via an adapter). Thank you to DayStar and others for delivering some storming fast 68K Macs.

MacRecorder - the serial port sound recorder? I found one of them at the local tip shop.

None of my things are incredibly rare but they are not commonplace either:-

2 x Apple remotes for TV/video cards in 6xx, 6xxx and 5xxx machines

Dayna etherprint adaptor - I use this to hook up my LocalTalk LaserWriter Select to my home network

ALPS Glidepoint ADB trackpad

Plusware numeric ADB PowerBook keypad

68-pin CD-RW Drive (8x4x20). Made by Yamaha. First one I have ever seen :-/

EDIT: oh, and I have an Apple IIgs SCSI Card :p

The old Kingston(?) ADB trackballs for the Mac

That funny scanner add-on for the ImageWriter - the "scanner" dropped in in place of the printer ribbon and scanned the page (badly) in bands. I think it was called "Thunder Scan" or something like that. Quite ingenious and popular in the day, but I don't think there would be many left now.

Macs-a-Million upgrade board for 128/512. Comes with 1 mb, but you can put up to 4 mb on it.

I have a Brainstorm 16MHz accelerator for the Mac Plus which I haven't installed since I doubt my soldering skills are up to the task.

I also have a NewerTech MicroDock, which seems to be fairly rare, though not terribly interesting.

... A few favourites:
Dove MacSnap RAM/SCSI upgrade for the 128K/512K -- there were loads of RAM/SCSI upgrade makers, but this was one of the best.

Orange PC cards. Great fun to play with because you have to refresh both your old Mac and old DOS skills. Note: I'm looking for the Windows 95/98 and NT driver packages for the Pentium PC cards.

Mac Recorder -- sound input for 68K Macs. Interesting to use for about five minutes unless you have a project that requires it.

Accelerators that use the IIci cache slot (or via an adapter). Thank you to DayStar and others for delivering some storming fast 68K Macs.
Snap!

Separate Dove 2MB MacSnap and SCSI kits

Orange, Apple and Radius/Reply DOS compatibilty cards

Farallon MacRecorder 2 and SoundEdit Pro Sound Systems (same gear; different owners)

Multiple DayStar PowerCache cards. My IIci/IIcx Macs gallop!

Divers EN/SC and LT/EN bridges

Classic II PDS FPU card

Switchable serial- and ADB/video-sharing boxes

Radius Rocket 68040/33MHz cards

and other bits that don't readily spring to mind.

de

I still have a Paperport scanner and a QuickTake camera, from another time.

Powerlink Presentor - a Duo microdock with composite (TV) video outAn IR wireless ADB keyboard with an integrated pointing device.

Set of 3 upgrades for the original tray load G3 iMac that give serial, ADB and video output
Can you tell us some more about the G3 cards, thanks.

MacEnhancer from Microsoft. Adds a paralle port & two serial ports through one of the Mac's serial ports.

Inside Macintosh, PHONEBOOK edition

Mac Rescue 6 MB & SCSI upgrade board for 128 & 512K Macs.

Through The Looking Glass original disk and box

MacBasic

Jasmine Direct Drive 20 (20mb hard drive; now holds a 2 gig SCSI!)

Charlieman, the MacCharlie is rare! I've been looking for one for years. Hang on to it!

Powerlink Presentor - a Duo microdock with composite (TV) video out
Suddenly I've got something else to add to my "must-have-but-don't-really-need" list.

My 37" Mitsubishi CRT. I haven't found much reference to it anywhere.

A kilometre (give or take) of RJ45 network cables. In 5ft lengths.

A similar amount of phone cables for use with the phonenet adapters I'm sure I still have here somewhere.

A slot-loading 50-pin SCSI DVDROM drive that I put into an external case and used with my Powerbook 5300 (and later on with my Sparcstations 10, 20, and IPX).

An Orange Micro Firewire Cardbus card that actually included the drivers.

An original System 7 Japanese Language Support CD.

Well, considering that I live in rural Queensland, EVERYTHING I have is rare! :p

But aaanyway....

- Greyscale Connectix QuickCam (with box and everything)

- PowerCD

- "Getting Started With Apple Computers" VHS tape for the Performas

- "Echo II" speech synth card for Apple IIs

- working AppleVision 1710AV (not sure for how long though :( )

- Teac 6x24 SCSI CD-R

- External SCSI HDD case that is done to look like a Q8xx/PM8x00, though much smaller, can take two 3.5" drives, made by some long-gone company called "MacPower"

- Apple Presentation System

Prototype Mac SE

Boxed Lisa 2

Shrinkwrapped PaperPort

Tons of software...ask for details...a highlight is an original Shufflepuck Cafe disk, they seem very rare out there.

mint condition apple iigs woz edition with box

mint condition c64, 1541 disk drive, and 1702 monitor (not mint)

tandy 102, mint

PowerBook 550c

QuickTake 100

PowerCD

Several Outbound Model 125 Laptops (Laptop, not the more common Notebook) with external floppy drive and SCSI adapters. Spare parts and most of the components I need to clone the external floppy drive. I still need an affordable supply of WD92C32 chips. When sold, these laptops are usually separated from their external floppy, and they have no internal floppy, making software installation, especially OS re-loading problematical.

Daystar adapter to put PowerCache or Turbo040 in Macs with an LC-style PDS slot.

Daystar adapter to put PowerCache or Turbo040 in a Mac IIcx. I hope to some day clone this thing so that it will physically fit in an SE/30. It should already be electrically compatible.

Video Vision Telecast system, but I've never actually used it. I'm a bit embarrassed by that.

Ten sets of four 16MB SIMMs for the IIfx sitting on my desk waiting to be assembled (chips and boards).

Several Power Computing Power 80/100/120 machines--the 8100 clone. These have spots for 5 NuBus slots on the motherboard, but one would need to steal the Fat-AMIC chip from a 9150 to implement the two uninstalled slots. I will probably never get around to this project.

Applied Engineering FDHD+, IIRC. I know I have the drive, just not sure if I correctly remember the name. The one that let's you use a 1.44 MB floppy on the Plus.

Three HD20 hard drives. The 20 MB Apple drive that connects by the floppy port.

Newlife Upgrade which installs in a Mac 128KE or 512KE and provides SCSI and 8 SIMM slots. That's right, 8 SIMM slots. In a Mac 512KE, one could install two 1MB SIMMs and six inexpensive 256K SIMMs and get a total of 4 MB (512K on motherboard). Back then it was a significant savings, since 1 MB SIMMs were upwards of $100 each.

Lapis Display Server Plus, external video upgrade for the Mac Plus. Clips over the CPU and actually provides a second display.

5 Brainstorm accelerators.

Microspot MacPalette II software, this is a print driver (extension) for the ImageWriter II which causes it to dither using the four color ribbon such that it can print in millions of colors. The output is surprisingly good, given that it's coming from a 72/144 dpi output device.

Prototype Mac SEBoxed Lisa 2
Two fouls! They are both extremely rare rather than being unusual.

I've got a Radius Thunder PCI in my 9500. It's not the one with the DSP on a daughter card, though. How rare is that?

The old Kingston(?) ADB trackballs for the Mac
Kensington. I have two. They rock.
Also snap on the following:

Gravis Mac Gamepad.Apple remotes for TV/video cards

ALPS Glidepoint ADB trackpad {x2}

numeric ADB keypad {x2, one with an integrated trackball}

50 pin SCSI DVD drives {x7 in a storage tower}

Radius Rocket 68040/33MHz card

Through The Looking Glass original disk

Daystar adapter to put PowerCache or Turbo040 in a Mac IIcx.
Some of the above thanks to members here!

Others that come to mind:

Digidesign Nubus Audiomedia II and Samplecell II cards

PCI Samplecell II

Supermac Video Spigot capture card for the IIsi PDS }:)

Dual IIsi/SE/30 PDS adapter for above

Radius Pivot video card for IIsi/SE/30

A /edit/ Grand Vimage LC PDS video card - I couldn't find drivers for this anywhere.

PowerComputing ADB keyboard and mouse

Black ADB Apple Extended Keyboard II

Daystar adapter / IIcx. I hope to some day clone this thing so that it will physically fit in an SE/30. It should already be electrically compatible.
I've had the same brainfart. I don't see any reason why they shouldn't work electrically, as they're both designed for a 16MHz 68030 CPU socket (rather than a PDS socket).

A very rough visual match between the one I have here and a loose SE/30 motherboard seemed to indicate that it would fit as is, if you trimmed off a part of the PCB that appears to have no traces or components. This is ignoring any case or internal drive collisions.

Power Computing Power 80/100/120 machines--the 8100 clone. These have spots for 5 NuBus slots on the motherboard, but one would need to steal the Fat-AMIC chip from a 9150 to implement the two uninstalled slots.
Say what? A 5 slot PPC Nubus machine? 8-o Is stealing the controller the only mod required? Apart from I assume installing two Nubus sockets.

Ayup, they most certainly do exist - back when they were new MacFormat UK reviewed one, and it most certainly did have 3 NuBus slots, and solder pads (and backplane slots) for another two)

I wonder if any made it to the colonies. I have three Power Computing machines here, but they're all PCI. Are the 8100 clones also towers, or desktops?

Oh, I just noticed you'd have to cannibalise a 9150 to make it work. Which kind of dampens the excitement. My guess is that they're as rare as each other.

t;]Power Computing Power 80/100/120 machines--the 8100 clone. These have spots for 5 NuBus slots on the motherboard, but one would need to steal the Fat-AMIC chip from a 9150 to implement the two uninstalled slots.
Say what? A 5 slot PPC Nubus machine? 8-o Is stealing the controller the only mod required? Apart from I assume installing two Nubus sockets.
Well, it's never that simple is it? The regular non-fat AMIC is a 160 pin chip and the FAT-AMIC is a 208 pin chip. If it was a simple chip replacement and socket installation I would have already done it.

The regular AMIC is the one found in 7100 and 8100s which only supports three NuBus slots.

In the Power 80/100/120 the AMIC chip resides on the I/O daughter card, which is unique to those machines. To save room on the circuit board, PCC put one of the SCSI ports and (IIRC) the serial ports and the DRAM video out on a daughter card, which contains that circuitry. I may be misremembering some of that stuff.

Anyway, to replace the AMIC with a FAT AMIC you'd pretty much have to redesign that I/O card to take the 208 pin FAT-AMIC and it's a very dense card, full of components. Then move the components over from an existing I/O card (found some extras at Goodwill years ago). I expect that the needed connections from the additional two NuBus slots do travel to that I/O slot's connector.

Having examined the issue in detail, it is my belief that PCC was pretty clever. Their original plan was probably to sell a three slot and a five slot version. The three slot version would have two unpopulated NuBus connectors, and use the AMIC version of the I/O card. The 5 slot version would have all five NuBus slots and come with an I/O card bearing the Fat AMIC. My understanding was that they couldn't get Apple to go along with the five slot version, or maybe they just couldn't agree of the price.

So the only difference between PCC's three slot and five slot versions would be the I/O card. Everything else would be the same component. That is good cost control.

So, the question is, was there ever a five-slot I/O card made? If so, where is it now?

That was part of the problem Apple had with the clones. Instead of flooding the market with cheap System 7 compatible machines like Apple wanted, the clone makers decided to compete directly with Apple and in some cases built even better machines than Apple was building. I don't blame Apple for wanting to keep the 9150 market to themselves. I suspect had they stuck with the original plan, Steve Jobs wouldn't have been so irked with them when he returned because they would have been helping Apple more than hurting.

mp.ls