Old Mac tragic from downunder.

[Schmoburger]

Gday folks, just thought I should introduce myself, the name is Kieran from the south east coast of Australia.

Ive been collecting old Macs since the late 90's... around about 98 I got my first Mac, a dual-floppy SE... got hold of a 90 build Classic not long after that, then it just went on from there. Always been a lover of the 9" compact and have probably close to a dozen of all descriptions... 512K's, Plus's both early and late, SE's in all their versions, Classics, Classic IIs... the whole deal, and basically all still work... some having had surgery to bring em back round, back when component level stuff was easy to obtain. most of the collecting started in high school after my school auctioned off and gave away a bunch of ancient 68k hardware... came home with a motherload of pizza boxes, compacts, and then as a part of the student admin team i'd end up basically getting first pic of whatever i wanted whenever this came up for disposal... this was back in the goood old days where Apple still had a stranglehold on the education market. I'd also end up finding things at hock shops, town dump buyback centers, school fetes and garage sales, and even just have things given to me.

So now, id have in excess of 50 machines stored away, most working, and some for parts.... LC's, Performas, Mac II's, 60x Powermac desktops and all in ones, a couple of clones, and more recently new world machines such as iMacs and eMacs and such have been falling into my lap by the truckload... many also from the ed sector after Macs started being phased out of schools. I just like toying with old Macs, fixing them, souping em up, building em, modifying them... Its satisfying.

I'm a believer in keeping good old tech alive and in sticking to the olschool for as long as it's useful, so as such I still use my souped up Yikes G4 tower to this day, and i still have the built blue G3 that preceeeded it. As well as a scattering of iMacs for fun

 

[nigwil]

Gday folks, just thought I should introduce myself, the name is Kieran from the south east coast of Australia.

Welcome to VCForums.

When you say South East cost of Oz, can you be more precise? I assume you are outside of Melbourne?

If you would like to be added to my list of OzCollectors, craft something that matches the entries in the list on this page and I can add you in:

http://www.retrocomputingtasmania.com/home/ozcollectorscollections

One day we might have enough people for a national get-together of vintage collectors!

cheers,
nigel.

 

[Schmoburger]

Welcome to VCForums.

When you say South East cost of Oz, can you be more precise? I assume you are outside of Melbourne?

If you would like to be added to my list of OzCollectors, craft something that matches the entries in the list on this page and I can add you in:

http://www.retrocomputingtasmania.com/home/ozcollectorscollections

One day we might have enough people for a national get-together of vintage collectors!

cheers,
nigel.

CHeers and thanks for the welcome Nigel! Nope not quite Melbourne, specifically Nowra, approximately 2hrs south of Sydney... but yes I would very much be interested to see a meet of vintage tech enthusiasts happen one day in the future, and it's certainly something I'd try to get behind. There was a point in time not too long ago the idea probably would have been laughged at.

Even when I had made cursory mention of the idea of a full-functioning Apple museum years ago, I was generally sniggered at even by computer people. But it seems that in the past 10 years, attitudes have changed, and now peoples eyes are opened to the fact that the period from the late-70's to the early 21st century where the most important developments in the evolution of the personal computer took place, was an importan important chapter in technological history, and the recent trend of reclaiming raw resources from obsolete electronic devices has given rise to a growth in the front of people out to preserve old technology for it's historical value.

Anyway, I shall get an email out to you shortly as I would love to be added to the above list.

Cheers.
Kieran

 

[kingchops]

Good to see some more fellow Aussies on here. Kieran, with all that Mac stuff, you wouldnt have a spare 240v power sweep for a Mac Plus would you?

BTW, im in Adelaide.

 

[Schmoburger]

Hmmmmm good question.... I know i did gut at least one Plus back in the bad old days that was a poor candidate for preservation, and I am certain I kept the PSU board out of it. Where I'd go about looking for it tho is a totally different story... that was when I was 16 so it could be anywhere or nowhere. If I come across something tho, I'll be sure to let you know.

 

[barythrin]

Welcome to the forums! Great way to get started when companies and schools dump things to the public sector. I'm not 100% sure but I think the state rules here now don't allow any public disposal of computer systems which sucks. It went from the very fun dumpster diving days to certified disposal contracts mostly due to lack of cleaning up systems properly prior to disposal. Mostly laziness I'd presume but I suppose some could be ignorance so secure data could escape here and there which is undesirable. In any event yes it used to be fun when things showed up in bulk at the thrift stores.