I saw a Mac 512K for sale on eBay in Quebec shortly after moving back to Ottawa for a great price. I bid on it and won it with no other real competition. The price and shipping were quite good. The system wasn’t really something a real collector would pay top dollar for. It didn’t come with original boxes or packing material. Plus, it would have been more valuable if it was an non-upgraded Mac 128K. This one, like so many others had been upgraded to 512K.
But it came with a keyboard, mouse and some software. Even better, everything worked. Unlike the Lisa which is still a restoration in progress, I haven’t had to do any work on this system.
Specs:
| CPU | 8MHz 68000 |
|---|---|
| Memory | 512 KB |
| Storage | One 400K 3.5″ drive. |
| Video | Integrated monochrome monitor. |
| I/O | Serial ports and not much more. |
What Do I Do With It:
We don’t turn on this machine too often. I have a flight simulator for it which I can’t really figure out. There is a pretty good chess game. And of course we have MacWrite and MacDraw. Samantha likes to use MacDraw.
I don’t have any development tools for this machine. I think the original development tools for the early Macs ran on the Lisa. Maybe the Pascal development environment I have for the Lisa would also allow me to write programs for the Mac.
Finally, something I would like to do is to open up the machine to look for the signatures of the creators of the Mac.