Thread
Let us mourn the loss of an original 128k
Meh, sounds like it probably was upgraded back when upgrading one of those little buggers made sense. I think we may be mourning 20 years too late 
It doesn't matt6er when it was upgraded, it is still an original 128k without it's original guts intact.
So what? Upgrading (then or now) is a perfectly reasonable thing to do with that computer. You can't really do anything with 128K, and the only reason I keep my 128K in that state is I have a 512K as well. If I just had one, I'd be upgrading for sure.
For some perspective, look at what some people here do to their SE/30's! Or G3 upgrades in powermacs and powerbooks. Or overclocking etc. It's just a way to make the most out of a particular machine.
The asking price is somewhat absurd though - by at least a factor of 10!
For some perspective, look at what some people here do to their SE/30's! Or G3 upgrades in powermacs and powerbooks. Or overclocking etc. It's just a way to make the most out of a particular machine.
The asking price is somewhat absurd though - by at least a factor of 10!
The only reason stock 128k Macs are collectable is because it was the 1st one made, they didn't sell that well so they are a little rare, and anybody who purchased one would have upgraded it just to make it usefull.
Its like people who spend tons of cash for the rare Atari 2600 carts, you know the ones that sucked so bad you could not give them away. Rarity might command some cash to fanatic collectors, but it does not mean the machine is so great from a users standpoint.
Its like people who spend tons of cash for the rare Atari 2600 carts, you know the ones that sucked so bad you could not give them away. Rarity might command some cash to fanatic collectors, but it does not mean the machine is so great from a users standpoint.
Uh, what!? Apple sold over 50,000 Mac 128Ks in the first 100 days, 72,000 units by April 1984 and 60,000 units alone in June, followed by steady 20,000 units/month through the end of the year. The 128K was sold for over 21 months all told.
There's nothing "rare" about them. The Macintosh TV, now that's rare, along with the Lisa only selling about 10,000 units each before being discontinued and even they turn up on eBay all the time.
As for upgrading to be useful, I would say it's odd that for 9 months the 128K had record sales despite the fact it was useless. I use my 128K several times a week and I assure you it is quite useful, just as it was then. Could it be more useful? You betcha, but the mere fact Apple could continue to sell the 128K for a year after the 512K was released demonstrates just how useful it was. I would agree even today that upgrading a 128K to a 512K solves certain problems, mostly created by Apple by intentionally leaving it behind, but for what it was marketed to do, it was amazing then and a fine computer still. You want the computer to do more? Buy a more powerful computer just like you do today.
As for upgrading it to a 512Ke, the 128K in it is certainly NOT dead. The beauty of that upgrade is all one needs to do is replace the drive and logicboard and voila, it's a 128K again. It would be a much more difficult proposition if it had been upgraded all the way to a Plus. I swap my 512K board into my 128K case all the time when I need to test things. Does that mean I kill it every time I swap it? The time to mourn a 128K is when its been mutilated, turned into a Macquarium instead of restored.
As for expecting $240, the guy is either an idiot, greedy or both. I've seen entire stock systems in their original boxes with literature sell for less. He's clearly trying to get as much milage out of it being a 128K as possible, when nothing could be farther from the truth. These eBay guys make me nuts with their branding common items "rare" all the time, because some poor fool will fall for it.
I'm with Kallikak. So what? I see 512ke machines, and upgraded 128k machines on EBAY regularly. This is nothing new, folks!
No, you are slightly mistaken in your reasoning. The original 128k M0001 was replaced by the M0001W, which had a different motherboard. This one is an M0001 so it had to be gutted to upgrade it. The M0001W didn't have to be.
I have an original Mac 128K that has an accelerator with 4MB of RAM. I think its a Brainstorm accelerator that's soldered onto the original processor. It looks like its an old upgrade installed in the 1980s.
Well as you can read here:
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_End_Of_An_Era.txt&characters=Jean-Louis%20Gassee&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date
The less then 20K units sold a month was much less then expected and lead to Jobs being fired down the road.
Granted I should have said uncommon (not rare), since quite a few of those that were sold ended up modified, broken, or recycled by now.
In my opinion they sold because of it being a ground breaking product (and the 1984 commercial probably helped the hype), but by the time usefull apps by 3rd parties were showing up more RAM was needed to make the machine still usable.
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_End_Of_An_Era.txt&characters=Jean-Louis%20Gassee&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date
The less then 20K units sold a month was much less then expected and lead to Jobs being fired down the road.
Granted I should have said uncommon (not rare), since quite a few of those that were sold ended up modified, broken, or recycled by now.
In my opinion they sold because of it being a ground breaking product (and the 1984 commercial probably helped the hype), but by the time usefull apps by 3rd parties were showing up more RAM was needed to make the machine still usable.
I believe one of the reasons Jobs was fired is because of his insistence that the Mac remain closed, and not expandable.
Only after his departure did Apple work on the "OPN MAC" of Jean Louis Gassee. That was the custom plate number on his car.
Only after his departure did Apple work on the "OPN MAC" of Jean Louis Gassee. That was the custom plate number on his car.
While it upsets me Jobs wanted the Mac a closed system, that is not why Jobs was fired. While some may argue there were a number of things that led to his axing, it all boiled down to Jobs having pissed off Sculley and Job's attempt to usurp the throne while Sculley was away on business. Had he remained loyal to Sculley, Sculley would have likely continued to look past Job's faults and would not have axed him.
Sculley was your typical big company CEO. So long as a machine sells and the company bottom line is boosted, that's all they really care about. It doesn't matter if it's open or closed to such top executives.
Jobs also victimized the employees for years and created dissension among them by splitting them off into groups and having them compete with one another instead of promoting harmony among them. Who the hell wants to work for Apple under those conditions?
Even Steve Jobs used a 512K in his demo of the original Macintosh. That's how little you could do with 128K of memory. People upgraded these just to make them functional. Upgrading one today would make no sense at all because of it's collectibility as a stock unit.
Even upgraded it remains an original Mac, just not original configuration. The traces for the 512K Ram were on the original board, and all that was needed was a RAM chip swap plus a bit of hardware for the addressing logic. Upgrading to use 800K disks is merely a ROM swap and drive swap - that's just software and a peripheral, and was always an intended part of the design. I may feel differently about destructive upgrades, but these are all non-destructive and 100% inline with the design of the machine.
The whole "collectibility" thing I find nuts. My oldest computer is a TRS-80 Model 1. It has the original Level 1 ROMs, and no numeric keypad etc. It is probably very "collectible" in that state. But it is also useless! The ROM has nothing but a 4K BASIC that won't even allow POKEs and PEEKs! There's just no way to get at the machine. So I am very definitely upgrading. I am writing a new ROM to give me a Z80 monitor and assembler as the OS. I have already upgraded from 4K to 16K of RAM. I am replacing some of the internal parts because of known failure modes etc. And even though this computer is sitting in a room full of other, generally much more powerful machines, I strongly maintain that even today my upgrade does make sense.
Ken
That was one of the things which "upset Sculley" -- he wasn't blind, you know. But had Jobs remained loyal to Sculley, Sculley would have looked past Jobs treatment of employees and kept Jobs on for the sake of retaining "insanely great" innovations at the company. While Jobs did evil things to "underlings" beneath him, none of those people had the power to fire him. His firing was linked to Sculley and the board of directors.
Interestingly, most all of the board members quit when Jobs came back to Apple in the late 90's. And a couple of those board members were board members at the time when Jobs was axed in the 80's.
As to the comment about 512k RAM used in Jobs demo. I must again agree with Kallikak. And I must add that comment has nothing at all to do with an OPEN or CLOSED system. It only had to do with RAM.
But going back to the exact title of this thread, I still don't get it. Sure, I hate to see Macs sold as fish tanks on EBAY -- which is the epitome of "mourning the loss" of an original Mac. But are we to police the world of used Macs? What can we do about it other than keep this site lively to show people classic Macs can be useful and fun. The fact is that upgraded and utterly mutilated Macs appear for sale on the net all the time. This is nothing new. I don't advocate fish tanks or gutting of old Macs, but I don't see any need to "mourn the loss" of such machines. It's not like this is happened "to every single classic Mac out there in the world today." It's only a few here and there. The vast bulk of machines out there are either sitting in closets of their original owners, or have been already dropped off at the city dump, or are still in use by the good people who post on 68kMLA!
So move past the "mourning" for a Mac you don't own, and get on with using (and posting about) a Mac you do own and love!
I a lot of cases I agree with you. This, however, is not one of those cases. I'm not saying you are wrong and you can certainly do as you please with your own machines. It would be interesting to see what you can do with an upgraded TRS-80.
I generally tend to keep my computers stock, especially if I only have one of them. The 128k Mac, to me, gets it's value from being 100% stock. I have a 512ke. I don't need another one. Typically I don't consider RAM upgrades to be a "stock" modification, but I do in the case of the 128k. To me it even decreases it's value if it says "128k" on the back of the case. Those 128k's, of course, were the ones sold after the 512k was released. The 128k's that only say "Macintosh" are truly the first Mac's.
Again, these are just my own personal opinions. Collecting Mac's just happens to be a hobby of mine.
:?:
I don't quite follow you. All I did was comment on how UNUSABLE the 128k Mac was and how this upgrade was done years ago by someone who needed more functionality. Steve Jobs could not have done his demo with the machine he was selling to consumers.
I still maintain that upgrading it TODAY to 512k doesn't make much sense... if you want a 512k, get a 512k. They are more readily available than the 128k's. People can do whatever they like with the systems they own. This is just my personal opinion.
aftermac, you clearly misinterpreted what I was saying. I said nothing of hacking my own Macs! Indeed, if you've read my posts elsewhere on this site (and on other sites -- where I am also known as "JDW"), you will find that I am rather a purist when it comes to classic Macs. I cringe at the sight of hack jobs, gutting of classic Macs, etc. Heck, that's why I still use a Mac 512k machine, in its stock condition, with the original 400k floppy drive and 64 ROMs! I spent hours fixing up the 400k drive when other people would have either trashed the machine or put in an 800k drive with 128k ROMs. I am as purist as they come, folks! But that's me. And I am in no way able to police the world. If someone screws up a machine and puts it on EBAY, what can I do about it. And so, with this in mind, if you re-read my post above, perhaps my original meaning will become more clear.
I absolutely agree 100% with your opinion! That's precisely why I bought my own Mac512! I even received a Mac 128k motherboard with it, which I never use because the Mac512 is what the Mac128 should have been! The Mac512 is exactly the same as the 128, but with 4 times the RAM, making the 512 a really usable machine whereas the 128 is hobbled in comparison. And yes, I used to use a 128k Mac for day to day work in 1984, so I know first hand how hobbled it was when running some software or copying disks. Disk swaps galore!
But folks, my the main argument in my previous post above did not center on the topics I speak of in the two paragraphs above. My main argument was against the theme of this thread and its title, for reasons I explain in the last paragraph of that post. We cannot police the world, so there's no need to "mourn" about what we see on EBAY. (And no, aftermac, I wasn't saying you are a part of the "mourning crowd." I am referring to some other posts in this thread when I talk about "mourning.")
JDW, thank you for clarifying what you were saying. As I said I didn't "follow" what you were saying. I certainly did misinterpret this statement:
Sorry, for the confusion. :I
I (somehow) thought you were agreeing with kallikak about finding the whole "collectibility" thing nuts. As he rebutted to my original post.
Sorry, for the confusion. :I
And fair enough. As I said earlier, my 128K is also stock. The statement I took issue with was your earlier comment that upgrading it today "makes no sense". Now you have clarified that to the far more reasonable "I generally tend to keep my computers stock" I have no objections at all.
And why I made my "nuts" comment is because collectibility means so many different things to different people. Almost no one seems to want a stock SE/30, yet everyone wants a stock 128K. I know several people with 128K macs that say "Macintosh" on the back. I don't actually know anyone who has one that says "Macintosh 128K" (though I expect macdownunder must have one.
) Who can say if such ones will turn out to be more valuable over time? I actually expect some of the upgrades that went in these machines will prove far more collectible in the long run since they are generally rarer, and also represent quite clever engineering. Yet frequently we have people here dictating what determines value.Ken
How true!
I have an SE/30 that I keep "sort of stock." I myself define "stock" differently than most. To me, "stock" means the original machine, but sometimes I will broaden the definition to include "with upgrades that were available in the original era the machine was still selling." So I didn't feel anything icky or hacky about swapping out the ELINA fan in my SE/30 with a more silent Silenx fan (even though Silenx brand fans weren't sold in that era), nor did I feel back about putting in a 4.5GB internal hard drive, 128MB RAM or DiiMO 50MHz 030 accelerator or MacCon Ethernet card. The machine still looks stock and it feels like a "speedy 030 Mac of that era." But some people gut the whole machine and throw in a Mac mini, which I would never do. Such mods are far from stock, according to my definition.
Add me to the list. It's just that the original 128k board is now sitting in the Mac512 upgrade box from Apple, in my closet, while the 512k upgrade logic board rests in the case! It has no red text on back because my machine was built before that era. Since "collectible" is often defined in terms of age, I guess we could say that the older "non-red-text-on-back" Macs would be slightly more valuable/rare than the newer red text versions. But so long as both have the stock 64k ROMs inside, they would be electrically and functionally the same.
Stock to me would mean as purchased from Apple (most common RAM, HD, cards sold from the factory).
A SE/30 with an accelerator was not stock, nor was one with 128MB of RAM, or a network card other then an Apple one.
A SE/30 with an accelerator was not stock, nor was one with 128MB of RAM, or a network card other then an Apple one.
What is this "gutted" business? It's a logicboard swap. Open the case, switch the logicboards, voila, it's a 128K again. What's to mourn? M0001 & M0001W are the same thing with different logicboards. Nothing's been gutted, just swapped. Maybe we're talking semantics here, but gutted is a little extreme for the difference between a M0001 and M0001E, which is what this is since the ROMs have been upgraded as well. Kallikak is right on with his assessment above!
I posted the same link you did to support my facts, but the URL is embedded in the sentence. And that article says that the Mac sold less than 20K units staring in November when marketing projected 75K (not Jobs). That had NOTHING to do with the record number of units they had sold to that point (and 20K a month is nothing to sneeze at). The Macintosh 128K sold VERY well. Just not as well in the 4th quarter '84 as everyone hoped. The fact 128Ks turn up on eBay at least 2 or 3 times a month on average, suggests they are not terribly rare. As for Steve Jobs getting "fired" ... where in the article does it say that? He was never "fired". In fact in the end, he resigned to start Next.
Boy this thread took a tangent.
And I wrote a number of term papers on it. How hobbled was it, what software? Disk swaps were a nightmare and still are. Thats why you had to have an external disk drive and with ANY Mac that didn't have a hard drive. I use my 128K with an external disk drive and never have a complaint. It's productive as I need it to be. I thanked God everyday when I was using it to write papers back then and never once cursed its deficiencies, well except occasionally when I had forgotten to save for a while and crashed, but that persisted right up through the SE/30s, so not just a 128K problem. I had other more powerful Macs available to me, but I never felt I needed them. As for software, I would argue a lot of the problems with the 128K was poorly written software. Doug Clapp's excellent "Complete Macintosh SourceBook" discusses it at length. Microsoft in fact was one of the biggest offenders not following Apple's guidelines. Take a look in MacTech, many of the reviews about Microsoft products complain about how they bucked Apple convention. The remaining problems were developers overreaching for the 128K's capabilities. It was such an amazing machine they wanted it to do more and released software that was overwritten for it. The same thing is true today. How many of you are running OSX on a G3? Talk about a Ferrari engine in a Volkswagen! But I have a little application called MusicWorks that was available almost from day one that allowed you to compose 4-part polyphonic songs in real music notation and play them back on the 128K. I never once complained about such an amazing piece of software back then and really have no complaints by today's standards, in part because it was probably so well written.
This doesn't even make any sense. To what are you referring? Steve did a lot of stuff during that
Any discussion about the 128K always turns into a bashing session and it just isn't fair. It's like comparing my Power Mac 6500 to my MacBook. I went out of my mind waiting for Adobe Photoshop to render an edit back then. The MacBook is like a dream come true for using Photoshop, except you know what, now I'm getting impatient with it. That's not a problem with the computer. It's a problem with what I want to do with it. And unlike JDW, I would venture that most people who bash the 128K never actually used it. Most of what I've read in this thread is anecdotal. Particularly the discussion about Jobs and Scully. A lot of it is just wrong too and nobody cites anything, so the mis-information abounds.
Now days, yes. But back then, I didn't have that luxury. You see, I was only 13 when my father got a bonus offer from his company. They gave him two choices: cash bonus or a Mac 128k. He took the Mac and I've been a Mac user ever since. But we weren't a well-to-do home, so we didn't have the cash for that $450 external floppy drive. Hence, I had no choice but to swap disks back then.
Of course, now I can just snap up the peripherals I need off EBAY without any worry about cost. It makes the hobby much more fun that it was in the early days (before it was "a hobby"). Back that I needed to get work done (reports and so on for school), but that disk swapping slowed me down, let me tell you!
But I'm with you completely on your post above. I still don't understand the title of this thread! It's bugging me!
I don't mind buying modded macs as long as they are done with some form of taste...upgrading a 128k isn't really killing it but rather increasing its usefulness which makes sense for the times when the 128k/512k was actively used. A 128k upgraded to a 512k may be a collectible in its own right as compared to a regular from factory 512k because it is not just a 512k but an upgraded 128k mac. Personally I think it'd be neat to have a stock 128k, a 128k upgraded to a 512k and a stock 512k but that's just me.
I've already stated my own philosophy a little in previous posts in this thread. But I will add that modding Mac 128k's and 512k's isn't really necessary or desirable. Unless you want to conduct some research into how compatible Brainstorm upgrades are, there's really no good reason to do those upgrades now. Why? Because you get the same thing, without hacks, without risking your analog board, for a very cheap price in EBAY in the form of a Macintosh Plus. That's right, quite nearly all the 128k and 512k upgrades basically convert those machines into a Plus. True, some added faster CPUs (e.g., 16MHz 68000 chips), but so did some upgrades for the Plus. That's why 512ke's are so cheap on EBAY. Nobody wants them! They are a stripped down Plus! If you want the new ROMs, get a Plus. But if you want a stock 512k, get a 512k with 64k ROMs, not a 512ke.
And so you can see that I prefer to keep my 128k and 512k machines stock, including the floppy drives and ROM. Yes, I do have an 800k floppy drive externally attached to my 512k, but I didn't have to mod my 512k to attach it. I just connected the cable!
The SE and SE/30 machines are a bit different story though, since they were built to be upgraded. The original 128k, 512k and even the Plus were not designed that way. That's why the SE stands for System Expansion -- so you can upgrade it. That is precisely why I don't feel my "upgraded" SE/30 is "far from stock" because it was meant to be upgraded that way. But if you yank out the guts and throw a Mac Mini inside, or swap the CRT for an LCD, then that is truly "carving up your machine" and is in no way, shape or form a "stock" classic Mac.
And so you can see that I prefer to keep my 128k and 512k machines stock, including the floppy drives and ROM. Yes, I do have an 800k floppy drive externally attached to my 512k, but I didn't have to mod my 512k to attach it. I just connected the cable!
The SE and SE/30 machines are a bit different story though, since they were built to be upgraded. The original 128k, 512k and even the Plus were not designed that way. That's why the SE stands for System Expansion -- so you can upgrade it. That is precisely why I don't feel my "upgraded" SE/30 is "far from stock" because it was meant to be upgraded that way. But if you yank out the guts and throw a Mac Mini inside, or swap the CRT for an LCD, then that is truly "carving up your machine" and is in no way, shape or form a "stock" classic Mac.
Any mod that can be completely reversed is ok by me (I'm eventually going to replace that q950 fan). The only problem is that it's very hard to remember how everything was in the first place (esp. in compact macs)!
Guys, don't mess with your 128Ks if it's stock.. you can always pick up another compact mac for cheap to play with if that's what you really want to do. There's not much difference across the compact mac range in terms of hardware anyway.
Guys, don't mess with your 128Ks if it's stock.. you can always pick up another compact mac for cheap to play with if that's what you really want to do. There's not much difference across the compact mac range in terms of hardware anyway.
What doesn't make sense? You seem to understand what I said. What Steve Jobs showed at the Shareholders meeting is not what was sold to customers. Period. In fact the 512k wasn't even available until 9 months later. I'm not bashing 128k, if anything I'm justifying why the Mac in the auction that started this thread would have been upgraded in the first place.
You're correct. I was 5 in 1984. My first Mac was a IIsi, which I received in January 1995, which paled in comparison to the new PowerMacs that Apple was selling... Which is actually similar to your PM 6500/MacBook comparison. The oldest Mac I currently own is a 512ke, so I have a pretty good idea what you can and cannot do with a 128k.
I didn't intend to make that as much of a blanket statement as it originally sounded. Likewise, thank you for clarifying your "nuts" comment. I mean, this is that last place you should have to justify collecting old computers.And fair enough. As I said earlier, my 128K is also stock. The statement I took issue with was your earlier comment that upgrading it today "makes no sense". Now you have clarified that to the far more reasonable "I generally tend to keep my computers stock" I have no objections at all.
And why I made my "nuts" comment is because collectibility means so many different things to different people. Almost no one seems to want a stock SE/30, yet everyone wants a stock 128K. I know several people with 128K macs that say "Macintosh" on the back. I don't actually know anyone who has one that says "Macintosh 128K" (though I expect macdownunder must have one.
Ken
JDW's post a couple back pretty much sums up my personal philosophy. My SE/30 even has an Ethernet card... *gasp*
While it's sad to see a (truly) dead Mac, I don't mourn them. I mourn my own when they die and that's about it.