"my god. it's full of macs." - superpixel

January 27, 2007 12:10 PM

Basement Mac collection via Cult of Mac. If you want to check out the tech specs on them Apples, go to The Macintosh Museum or the Low End Mac Museum. For more Mac history visit The Apple Museum or The Apple Museum.
posted by Kattullus (34 comments total)

Dont forget everymac.com.
posted by The Deej at 12:24 PM on January 27, 2007

i thought i knew my macs, but ive never even heard of this one!
posted by phaedon at 12:37 PM on January 27, 2007

phaedon:

and suffered from being overpriced and under-powered.

never happened since, thankfully. lol
posted by matteo at 12:44 PM on January 27, 2007

Makes me want to fire up my 128 in the basement. Still got it. My first computer.
posted by MapGuy at 12:46 PM on January 27, 2007

that's healthy.
posted by dong_resin at 12:55 PM on January 27, 2007

phaedon writes "i thought i knew my macs, but ive never even heard of this one!"

That was one of Apple's most famous flops, mostly because of its extraordinary price.
posted by clevershark at 1:13 PM on January 27, 2007

Cough self link Cough
posted by cillit bang at 1:15 PM on January 27, 2007

Hey, cb, what the self-link?
posted by The Deej at 1:29 PM on January 27, 2007

er... what'S the self link?
posted by The Deej at 1:29 PM on January 27, 2007

I can walk through that list and say "had it, wanted it, skipped it, loved it, WTF?, miss it, best of the bunch, crap..."

The Mac IIcx was my real workhorse. Back in the early 90s, clients would send their Powerpoint or Persuasion files to my BBS (Spider Island on an old SE30) at close of business day. I'd image their slides to a Mirus or and Agfa all night and deliver them by noon. Sleep from 1 to 5. Rinse. Repeat. Practically printed money.
posted by hal9k at 1:30 PM on January 27, 2007

i thought the quadra 840av i bought was expensive, but shit, 7500 for a mac is far out.
posted by phaedon at 1:30 PM on January 27, 2007

Egad. SuperMac! A friend who transferred his medical illustration skills from airbrush and compressor to Photoshop and a Wacom tablet actually bought one of those. On a lease. Cripes, he paid on that for five years.
posted by hal9k at 1:34 PM on January 27, 2007

That's it, I'm selling my puny Mac collection. All I've got is about 12, all used to be mine.

I didn't see the Mac Portable though. I wonder what mine would be worth these days?
posted by DragonBoy at 1:34 PM on January 27, 2007

I've got a 20th Anniversary Mac sitting in the basement, in the original box. Still runs like a champ and the Bose sound system is great.

A beautiful design, and the machine is still functional. I have a tivo hooked up to it. Since everything around here is on the network, I can stream music from my powerbook to the Tivo, which then uses the screen and sound system on the 20th mac to play through the Bose system... how many 10 year old computers can do that!
posted by HuronBob at 1:35 PM on January 27, 2007

When the iMac first came out, a friend had 30 or so old SEs in his basement which he proceeded to paint the shells in the grape, bondi, green, etc. colors of the iMac line. He installed a screen clock so it would begin at start-up as a screen saver and sold them to members of the user group. He called them (wait for it)...

tiMacs
posted by hal9k at 1:40 PM on January 27, 2007

I didn't see the Mac Portable though. I wonder what mine would be worth these days?

Ahh, the "Luggable". I'd say you owe 10 bucks to anyone who will carry the thing home...
posted by rollbiz at 1:59 PM on January 27, 2007

Hey, cb, what the self-link?

Sorry, that was a shameless self-link by me.
posted by cillit bang at 2:01 PM on January 27, 2007

My first Mac was a Centris 610 -- 16mb of ram and an 80 mb hard drive. I bought Photoshop 3 with it, and it worked like this: Select TIFF file to launch, go get a coke. Make some adjustments in curves, hit okay, go to lunch. Return from lunch, hit save, and go shoot some film in the camera, or something. When finished with a job, I'd have to delete in from the drive to make room for the next, and re-start the machine to clear the RAM. I went big-time when I got a 500 mb external drive that could hold a whole MONTH'S worth of work, and a 44 mb syquest to shuffle files around town. Wasn't managing SCSI id's fun?

Ah, the good old days. It's easy to forget how far we've come.
posted by Devils Rancher at 2:03 PM on January 27, 2007

My first Mac was on an Amiga. The Mac came on a floppy disc with this bizarre "8-Ball" demo.
posted by juiceCake at 2:55 PM on January 27, 2007

I used to have an Appletalk network of four Mac IIcxs that was strictly for playing Spaceward Ho. With the right crowd that is some great drunken fun!
posted by Sukiari at 3:15 PM on January 27, 2007

Oh man, I had completely forgotten about the existance of Spaceward Ho! What a fabulous game that is. That and Dark Castle are the games that bring tears to this ol' macgamer's eyes.
posted by Kattullus at 3:39 PM on January 27, 2007

I applaud the savant collector - I've 7 typewriters crowding my living room along with two old-school, tube based radios and a handful of vintage transistor models.

But each item in my small collection is unique and different. While I have 7 typewriters, I have 7 different examples of typewriters.

A basement full of iMacs and Mac Classic machines, all of them more or less identical and stacked up, is a bit odd. Something about the mass of computers and its careful organization made me a bit sad. Evidence of a certain obsessive compulsion rather than a joyful collection. But who am I to judge?

I covet that 20th Anniversary Mac like you wouldn't believe. When they were initially announced I contemplated selling my body to finance the purchase. Even now, I get a bit choked up thinking about it.

Someday, if I've obscene amounts of expendable income, I'll track one down and install it in a DeLorean.
posted by aladfar at 3:39 PM on January 27, 2007

dude doesn't have a Cube, does he?

YOUR OBSESSION HAS NOT BEEN FULFILLED
posted by furiousthought at 3:59 PM on January 27, 2007

Hey, cb, what the self-link?

Sorry, that was a shameless self-link by me.

Ohhhh gotcha! And don't call your own self-link shameless. Indeed, it was shameful.

:)
posted by The Deej at 4:13 PM on January 27, 2007

In a comment on one of the flickr photos he says he's got a cube in his loft. He does say he's missing a Lisa, however.
posted by blasdelf at 4:18 PM on January 27, 2007

hal9k:

The SE30 was a great, great machine. I ran a BBS on mine as well (using Hermes, the WWIV clone) for several years, from around 89-94. Good times.
posted by psmith at 4:18 PM on January 27, 2007

Speaking of Ho! Spaceward Ho! 5 is out and has tcp/ip play. Great fun can be had.
posted by Sukiari at 4:41 PM on January 27, 2007

im so glad i didn't kill myself yesterday
posted by phaedon at 5:24 PM on January 27, 2007

I've long held a dream of taking the Mac SE that the Wife gutted to make a fish tank (which unfortunately never happened), and turning it back into a modern machine. I was going to fit a mini into it, with a color touchscreen mounted in place of the old CRT. As an extra added bonus, I had always hoped to find a wireless screen that I could pop out of the casing to use remotely (unfortunately while such beasts exist, they are expensive and don't work very well).

I still have the empty case, maybe one day I will have the spare cash and energy to get around to finishing that project.

And just for fun, if it ever does get done, I'll run a fish-tank screen saver. Just for the Wife.
posted by quin at 5:56 PM on January 27, 2007

What I truly covet is a room full of BeBoxen.
posted by dmd at 8:03 PM on January 27, 2007

I have a Cube and a Macintosh Portable (and many others.. No TAM though. They never sold them in Australia, and shipping one out here is worth more than my relationship ;)
posted by theducks at 8:07 PM on January 27, 2007

I don't see any of the colorful iBooks... perhaps he would like to pay me a ridiculous sum for mine, it still works!
posted by grapefruitmoon at 9:10 PM on January 27, 2007

I bet that guy get laid... A LOT.
posted by subaruwrx at 12:57 AM on January 28, 2007

I bet that guy get laid... A LOT.

Well, he got screwed by several models.
posted by hal9k at 4:02 AM on January 28, 2007