MACINTOSH PLUS

The Macintosh Plus computer is the third model in the Macintosh line,
introduced on January 16, 1986 with a price tag of US$2,599.
As an evolutionary improvement over the 512K, it shipped with 1 MB of RAM
standard, expandable to 4 MB, and an external SCSI peripheral bus.
Reference: Wikipedia

MACINTOSH PLUS

Manufacturer

Apple

Release date

1986 - 1990

Operating system

System 3.0 - System 7.5.5

CPU

Motorola 68000 @ 8 MHZ

Memory

1 - 4 MB RAM


 

The story:

Summary: I obtained this piece in 2021. It was in exceptional condition with an external SCSI-drive with 20 MB of space, an Apple ImageWriter II and a black carrying bag.

 

Exterior: The exterior was in exemplary condition with barely any yellowing to the plastic.

 

Interior: The interior was also in superb condition.

There were no issues with the motherboard, PSU, RAM or HDDs what so ever. Everything was working as it was designed.

 

Upgrades: I decided early on to replace the 4 x 256 KB of RAM (a total of 1 MB) with 4 x 1 MB RAM-sticks. This provided the maximum intended upgrade of memory.

I have replaced the RIFA-caps in the power supply and added a appropriate diode to provide power over the SCSI-bus as this was not a feature on this model.

The drive in the external drive works, but is notoriously slow. I therefore opened up the drive cabinet and added a BlueSCSI-unit to the same cable, making it a "multi-drive-drive". The OS is booted from the BlueSCSI, making it seek, write, and load faster. I went with system 7.1 as I needed a Norwegian version and this was the latest release I found. It originally came with system 6.0.8. The original drive is still in there and shows in System 7, ready to assist. It helps that the seek-sounds from the drive is still present to keep the nostalgia alive.

OS, software and games came from images downloaded from MacintoshGarden. Since the Plus came with a 800 KB floppy drive, working differently than the standard 720 KB IBM-format, I needed a modern solution to transfer files to floppies. I chose the Greaseweazle-project together with the FluxEngine-software allowing me to write images meant for the 800 KB-format from a normal floppy on a Windows PC.

  
Photo Gallery:

 


 

 

      

   This page was last updated 05.04.2024