MACing off

I decided I had to let go of some of my old Apple computers. I thought I would take a picture of them before the trip to the dump.

 

While planning for the picture, I realized that I could represent every major operating system version that Apple released for Macintosh. From a 128k Mac running System 1.0 to a G5 Tower running System 10.4.8.

 

I also realized that I could find representative applications for each system era.

 

While I was working with the vintage Macs, I learned that it can be very tricky doing what I had planned. I had hard drives fail after I got them setup, I had bad logic boards, bad floppy drives, bad CRTs. I had to solve networking issues and find a web page that would load on System 8 with Netscape 3. I had to find twenty five year old floppies with working System 1.0 and MacPaint. I had to track down every System disk I had stored around the house.

 

It is amazing that some of all of these computers still work. Computing has come a long way in the last twenty five years. Apple’s OS X has improved greatly since 2001.

 

I plan to turn some of the old PowerBooks in to live picture frames. I will post these projects when I complete them.

 

Finally a list of the equipment:

 

Note: Apple did not release a System 3 or 4. Check out this site for info.

 

System 1.0 – Mac 128K upgraded to Mac Plus

System 2.0 – Mac SE

System 5.0 – Mac SE

System 6.0.8 – Mac IIfx

System 7.1 – PowerBook 170

System 8.0 – Mac Duo 2300c in Duo Dock

System 8.5 – Mac Duo 2300c

System 9 – iMac slot loading CRT model

System 10.0 – PowerBook G3 Firewire (Pismo)

System 10.1 – PowerBook G4 400MHz (TiBook)

System 10.2 – PowerMac G4

System 10.3 – iMac G5 20” LCD

System 10.4 – PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0GHz

 

Done