Thread

Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like?

68kMLA 68k 45 posts May 17, 2013 to Jan 3, 2014

#1 Fri, 17 May 2013 - 21:17 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #1

Do any of you remember your first experience with the Macintosh II?

Were you blown away, by it?

With all that 68020 Speed / Color / Expandability and the mathematical power of that Motorola 68881 FPU installed!

#2 Sat, 18 May 2013 - 06:02 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #2

I remember being like "what? Why is Apple making an IBM computer?"

#3 Sat, 18 May 2013 - 07:08 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #3

I didn't get to use a modular Mac until the Iicx, so no, I don't.

I *DID* get a summer temp job in high school that I got to use a IIfx for the most undignified thing possible: copying floppy disks.

The (very large) company was rolling out System 7, and needed many sets of install disks. The only dual-floppy-drive system available in IT was the IIfx. So I got hired to copy floppy disks for 8 hours a day on the fastest computer available. (This would have been Summer 1991, IIRC.)

#4 Sat, 18 May 2013 - 07:17 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #4

Everything in my High School (1988-1991) was compact Macs - Plusses, SEs. I only saw modular Macs at the computer store.

#5 Sat, 18 May 2013 - 07:22 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #5

My schools seemed to go right from apple IIe's to LC's, nothing in between.. in '02 however, there was an se/30 and a stylewriter that the whole class (10 people?) shared.. it was odd..

#6 Sat, 18 May 2013 - 13:40 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #6

We had a Mac II and IIx at the NYMUG office, but they had the tiny 640x480 monitors of the era, so they didn't really impress me that much. My SE/Radius16 production machine was just as fast and had the Math CoPro. I was going to get a used Mac II to upgrade for the Rocket I'd planned on buying, but the guy I talked to at Sun Remarketing made a good case for going for the extra money for the IIx rather than bringing a II up to the specs required.

The performance of the IIx still didn't impress me much, even with the extra four MB of RAM. The PanaPro M1900M2 B&W TPD/Card combo was a revelation however, the 5x increase in desktop real estate was like playing on a football field. [

] ]'> The SE became the Plotter Server, productivity soared and I was happy as a clam while I saved every Nickle and Dime the business could spare for the Rocket.

The Logitech ScanMan, when the 4" hand scanner class rolled around and became affordable, was the only productivity enhancement to come anywhere near the escape from the confines of the 9" Periscope of the Compact Series in terms of productivity.

Those six NuBus slots made the Mac II revolutionary. :approve:

#7 Sat, 18 May 2013 - 19:26 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #7

Remember when the Mac II first shipped there was almost zero software that could make use of the colour capability. We had to wait until August 1987 for SuperMac to launch PixelPaint.

#8 Sat, 18 May 2013 - 23:56 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #8

My first experience was with a regular II with 8mb ram , the stock framebuffer and a monochrome display. It was a decent upgrade from the SE I had been running for years previous as it was at least twice the power of the SE.

#9 Sun, 19 May 2013 - 04:09 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #9

My first experience with a full width modular Mac (can't say whether it was a II, IIx, or IIfx) was right around Y2K. I was teaching Office to junior high aged kids at an Omaha high school in the Summers between 1997 and 2003. The regular-school-year teacher whose room I used had a fantasticly stocked back room full of every kind of Mac. So one day for giggles we took a II and put a graphics card in every slot. (Was there such a thing as a dual monitor nubus card? Because I swear I remember 8 monitors hooked up to it when we were done.) Anyway we arranged the 6 or 8 monitors on school desks in a semicircle around the chair and everybody took a turn taking the mouse pointer from the first screen all the way to the last with the Kensington mouse ball. It was like sideways Golden Tee. Bzzzzzzzzz!

We did all kinds of fun stuff with those spare machines of his. He quit suddenly one summer and left it all in that back room. I managed to rescue a few from their destined dumpstering, only to leave most of them in a back room at a different school myself a few years later.

#10 Sun, 19 May 2013 - 21:45 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #10

so basically the Macintosh II had alot of potential, but software hadn't come around for a while... By the time software had come around, Newer macs were already out and the new machines were alot better.

Reminds me of my VOODOO 5500, it was a bad to the bone graphics card at the time. there was only a couple games that could drive it.

it kinda seemed to me at the time like a silly waste of money.

#11 Sun, 19 May 2013 - 22:33 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #11

so basically the Macintosh II had alot of potential, but software hadn't come around for a while...

Right away there was good software for the Mac II, just not colour software. Excel calculations or database sorts ran five times more quickly, even before the apps were optimised. Scientific and engineering apps that used the FPU became monstrously fast.

And the Mac II really gave the graphics card developers something to work with. Multi monitor systems became commonplace in the Mac graphics art trade, even though it was mainly a greyscale world.

#12 Mon, 20 May 2013 - 02:42 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #12

The only version of Mac AutoCAD came out for the Mac II line, plus a ton of scientific and stats software.

#13 Mon, 20 May 2013 - 02:59 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #13

Mac BBS systems flourished, filling the slots in the Mac II with Hurdler HQS 4-port Serial Cards from Creative Solutions

Before the Mac II, the world was Black & White, for all practical purposes. Grayscale was a revelation and color of any quality was almost unheard of, the Mac II series was the breeding ground for the evolution of high end color graphics solutions. Digital_Darkroom shipped for grayscale the same year as the Mac II, but Photoshop 1.0 was still three years away.

#14 Mon, 20 May 2013 - 03:51 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #14

Unfortunately the Mac II was released about 4 months after I was born. I've never even seen one in person, other than the IIfx-upgraded Mac II that I owned for a very short period of time.

#15 Mon, 20 May 2013 - 06:27 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #15

My IIxperience was while working in a hospital radiology department. We used the II's to track and print (barcoded) labels for the Radiology film jackets. I hung around the guy who was developing the program (it was done in MS Quickbasic) and at the time it was the largest program written in that language on the Mac. He had to work with Microsoft to overcome some size related limitations and after he left, he gave me his copy of Inside Macintosh (1-3).

The best part of the program was the Machine language routine that printed the barcodes out in under a minute! Pretty fast for the time - I wonder what they did with those Mac II's? For that matter, I would like to know where the IIfx's in Nuclear Medicine went to...

#16 Mon, 20 May 2013 - 12:28 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #16

Anybody know where to find the story of the "contest" that the Macintosh II won? I know folklore.org tells the story of the Mac, and that Burrell Smith was working on a next design, that wasn't chosen, but that's all it says. Another source I've read says there were three contenders for the next Mac, but that's all it says. What's the scoop?

#17 Mon, 20 May 2013 - 20:01 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #17

Before the Mac II, the world was Black & White, for all practical purposes. Grayscale was a revelation and color of any quality was almost unheard of, the Mac II series was the breeding ground for the evolution of high end color graphics solutions. Digital_Darkroom shipped for grayscale the same year as the Mac II, but Photoshop 1.0 was still three years away.

That timescale pretty much ties up with the launch of 32 bit QuickDraw (April 1989). Graphics card manufacturers had created 24 bit colour boards before that date but each one implemented the functionality in a different way. Software developers had to write around the limitations of Color QuickDraw to get 24 bit colour, and they had to do it for every card. Development speed was limited until 32 bit QuickDraw on System 6 created a new standard. Then colour really took off.

Does anyone recall the test image of a frog that was used to demonstrate the ability to print green on a dye sublimation printer?

#18 Mon, 20 May 2013 - 20:41 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #18

Before the Mac II, the world was Black & White, for all practical purposes. Grayscale was a revelation and color of any quality was almost unheard of, the Mac II series was the breeding ground for the evolution of high end color graphics solutions. Digital_Darkroom shipped for grayscale the same year as the Mac II, but Photoshop 1.0 was still three years away.

The Amiga would like a word with you.

#19 Mon, 20 May 2013 - 20:46 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #19

Sorry off topic, I recapped an Amiga board / 040 cpu card over the weekend for the first time.

from purely a cap perspective the job was about as annoying as IIcx +/-

Seems like some pretty decently built stuff, I never had the luxury of playing around with an Amiga.

#20 Mon, 20 May 2013 - 20:55 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #20

It's an interesting system - from that period where new computers were branching out into this GUI thing, but before everything became either Windows or Unix derivatives. You can get a basic A500/A2000 setup pretty cheap, should you ever want to give it a shot.

#21 Tue, 21 May 2013 - 01:43 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #21

The Amiga would like a word with you.

I worked with a bunch of Mac programmers in the 1980s who wibbled with an Amiga at home. The Amiga and Atari ST were great computers but they were an even smaller market than the Mac. There was just no space in the commercial market for them.

#22 Tue, 21 May 2013 - 19:29 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #22

The Amiga is a fascinating system. At the time, it had excellent graphics and sound, roughly equivalent to a Sega Genesis game console, the A500/600/1000/1200 boxes even sharing the same CPU. Because of these capabilities, it was a popular home computer with a LOT of great games. The other application they were particularly good for was video since they had native support for NTSC and PAL video formats. A great many TV studios used Amigas for video overlay graphics and video switching, right up until the transition to HD.

These days there is a really cool open source clone of the Amiga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimig

I built one of these recently and have a few extra blank PCBs left if anyone is interested. This is NOT a beginner project though as it's almost entirely surface mount, including the 208 pin FPGA. It took me several hours to assemble it by hand. Ready-made units are available but they're a bit spendy. There is also a build that will run directly on the Altera DE2 FPGA dev board, that one uses a soft core 68000 implemented within the FPGA while the original Minimig uses a real 68k chip.

#23 Wed, 22 May 2013 - 00:49 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #23

wow i want to build my self an Amiga now. thanks james

#24 Thu, 23 May 2013 - 07:20 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #24

All I remember was playing around with one at the old Micro Computer Systems store in Lynnwood, WA, and having one of the salespeople do a remote desktop of someone else's Mac Plus, then, that person shutting the Mac II down from their Plus. Was back in November 1988. Also remembered looking at the price tag and thinking that someone could easily pick up a nice 1983 Volvo 240 for that amount ($8400 or so with all the peripherals)...

-J

#25 Thu, 23 May 2013 - 07:31 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #25

Before the Mac II, the world was Black & White, for all practical purposes. Grayscale was a revelation and color of any quality was almost unheard of, the Mac II series was the breeding ground for the evolution of high end color graphics solutions. Digital_Darkroom shipped for grayscale the same year as the Mac II, but Photoshop 1.0 was still three years away.

Click to expand...

The Amiga would like a word with you.

Yup, with Deluxe Paint, one of the first full-color graphics editing applications - a full two years before the Macintosh II came out.

#26 Thu, 23 May 2013 - 09:02 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #26

We used to buy wire wrap boards (can't remember the vendor) with existing Nubus interface circuitry that provided access to the address/data bus and control lines. We built our own controller boards and the software group wrote unique drivers using MPW. Latch 8 bits, shift, repeat as necessary then process the assembled word. Apple was amazed that we could do real time simulation with a Mac II.

Those were the days.

#27 Fri, 24 May 2013 - 06:46 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #27

Macintosh II feels like (now long time afterwards) going back in a sense to the concept of Apple ][ - with the expansion slots and all.

And oh man, it was B I G .

#28 Tue, 4 Jun 2013 - 17:48 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #28

Was it notoriously big?

#29 Wed, 5 Jun 2013 - 18:19 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #29

It is similar size to an IBM PC XT or AT unit. What made it look really huge was perching the 13"/14" AppleColor High-Resolution RGB Monitor on top.

#30 Wed, 5 Jun 2013 - 21:27 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #30

I remember my wood shop class, up on the top shelf was a yellow/dusty ( even then ) 1995

Was a Mac II, not sure if it was a II, IIx, IIfx

but it was old and big, I remember. - thats about it

haha.

I'm pretty sure in his office (thinking back) he had a IIcx/IIci because it was laying flat, on its side. He opened it up to show me the HD,

and it had one of those Double height 3.5" IBM 160mb HD's in there.

One day in lab, I was chilling talking to him about my 286 IBM PS/2 Micro channel, He was praising Micro Channel.

Saying how Awesome it really is and way ahead of its time.

#31 Tue, 10 Dec 2013 - 21:29 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #31

How do these Macintosh II series monsters hold up over time from Caps and Batteries?

They have two batteries don't they?

Do they have a high success rate after new battery and recap?

#32 Tue, 10 Dec 2013 - 21:40 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #32

pretty sure if the cap goo gets too bad some traces get eaten. pretty common with the Mac II. i don't know the details though.

other then i have a dead mac II and dead mac IIx board.

I have recapped many IIfx boards for people, They always seem to have good success after a cap job.

#33 Tue, 10 Dec 2013 - 22:01 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #33

i remember testing Photoshop 0.63 .....

the 0.63 version still works on my G5 quad under classics

my apple computers - list

#34 Wed, 11 Dec 2013 - 00:23 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #34

We got a II, and a bunch of SEs at the ad agency I worked at at the time. These supplemented the Pluses we had at the time.

Loved the speed of the II, but I remember thinking from a visual standpoint it was a boring rectangular box.

In my opinion the /// and the Lisa are the best looking Apple products.

#35 Wed, 11 Dec 2013 - 08:38 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #35

Sure I recall!

For me the MacII was among the best Apple ever made.

I could not afford a new one and when I finally could buy a used one, there was plenty of software for it.

It was maxed out with PS2 RAM and a Daystar Universal Power Cache. Had a PLI SCSI HBA and ethernet card too.

Some work was done with that Mac. The two VARTAs were still good when the PSU finally kicked the bucket.

As for the A2000B it was very expandable too, but Amiga video was 50Hz PAL compatible in Europe.

Good enough for gaming, but crap for DTP or other serious work. DigiPaint still was ahead of its time, but HAM (hold and modify) was only a niche solution.

#36 Wed, 11 Dec 2013 - 14:06 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #36

the IIfx was the first mac i owned, moving on from the IIgs,

that's when i got to try out my 3D debut with raytracer and after that infini-D, the good old days, it quit working and i moved on to a performa 630.

#37 Fri, 13 Dec 2013 - 19:48 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #37

How do these Macintosh II series monsters hold up over time from Caps and Batteries?

My IIfx has mostly tantalum solid-state caps from the factory (Fremont CA 1992), so I assume that the only part that will need recapping will be the PSU (its a Sony though, so probably uses high quality Japanese caps) and the two rather large radial electrolytic caps on the logic board some time far in the future.

Looking at a photo of the II/IIx logic board, it doesnt look like any of the caps are surface mount so they should be one of the easier macs to recap.

:beige:

#38 Fri, 13 Dec 2013 - 19:55 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #38

My IIx has the standard surface mount aluminum electrolytics.

#39 Fri, 13 Dec 2013 - 19:59 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #39

It seems that the II board used old school electrolytics that weren't surface mount, the IIx, the aluminum SMT electrolytics, then the IIfx could use either. The II also had soldered ROM chips with a ROM SIMM header underneath, whereas the IIx/IIfx had ROM SIMMs. Then, battery-wise, II's had them soldered, as did early IIx machines. Later IIx and the IIfx used battery holders.

-J

#40 Fri, 13 Dec 2013 - 20:00 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #40

the II and the IIx have SMT caps… and they leak. and cause issues too.

The IIfx…. Some IIfx machines got all tantalum caps… Some got SMT Electrolytic caps…

there is makings/PADS for both kinds of caps… its a little odd.

just like on the Macintosh II/IIx there are Pads for SMT LYTICS and Through Holes for Axial caps too…

Funny Funny…

#41 Sat, 14 Dec 2013 - 03:25 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #41

Guess my II board must've been an earlier one. Had axial caps all over the place, like on a Mac Plus or SE. Machine was from the 33rd week of 1987...

-J

#42 Sat, 14 Dec 2013 - 05:01 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #42

seems to me like the axel caps hold up pretty good

#43 Sat, 14 Dec 2013 - 09:04 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #43

Yep. Board was clean. I probably would've had the later battery holders retrofitted to the board, if I kept the machine stock. Now, it's a IIfx, which I don't mind one bit.

-J

#44 Mon, 30 Dec 2013 - 17:05 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #44

My first experience with a big-box II came in 1995. One of my friends had a IIx and invited me over to play Prince of Persia.

The IIci was the one the computer store around me seemed to push, so I didn't really see much of the IIfx at the store. At the time, I was more interested in software than hardware anyway, and would gravitate toward whatever computer had the best titles on it. Once I got into hardware, the first Quadras had already come out.

Like most everyone here, I can't say I ran into them at schools much, but I know there was a middle school near me with a II or IIx (can't remember which model) in a music classroom.

#45 Fri, 3 Jan 2014 - 02:36 Macintosh II - Do you remember what it was like? — #45

Do any of you remember your first experience with the Macintosh II?Were you blown away, by it?

With all that 68020 Speed / Color / Expandability and the mathematical power of that Motorola 68881 FPU installed!

I don't remember - I was using a SUN Workstation with a 68020 in graduate school, and that was my rationale for taking out a loan and paying the big bucks when I went to my first job (still had some work to do to finish my dissertation, and needed something to use at home, that had LaTex, etc.):

Mac II + HD (3144) + RGB Monitor (599) + Video Card (299) + Video Card Expansion Kit (89) + S&H = 4350 (a student discount, so less than list)

I'm guessing that I was not blown away, having worked with the SUN Workstation, but it did work for me. (I did have to get it serviced immediately - bad keyboard).

It was also our main system until 1996, though I was getting pretty desperate by this point. We couldn't afford a new Apple system, going instead with a refurbished Power Computing system.

How do these Macintosh II series monsters hold up over time from Caps and Batteries?

My Mac II was just recently resurrected after many years of not being used. I did have to replace the batteries, but have not recapped anything (living dangerously I guess).