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Advice on choosing vintage Apple computers?

G

gladders

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Hi everyone, long-time lurker emerging from the shadows :)

I've never owned an Apple computer, and I want to change that. The range of choices seems confusing though, especially the 1990s range of machines.

I'm in the UK, so some of the choices are more limited. For example, from what I can see, Apple ][ computers, while they are occasionally spotted, are extremely expensive and pretty rare.

I'd like if possible to grab a few machines which would allow the broadest possible reach of Apple software compatibility. I understand the Macintosh LCs come packaged with Apple ][e compatibility from the off, so I should probably get one of those - any recommendations?

And LCs are 'low cost', so I presume their ability to run 1990s software can be limited. So would a Quadra of some sort be recommended? Or would it make more sense to forgo the LC and just get a Quadra?

Finally, I want to get an early Power Mac which is pre-OS X, as it's my understanding that its compatibility with the 68000 machines is patchy. Any recommendations for that?

If I'm doing this right, this (either an LC+Quadra, or just a Quadra, plus a Power Mac) would bring me up to the advent of OS X. Does that make sense? Am I missing anything?

Oh, one more thing: I prefer the standalone box machines, not the ones with monitors built-in.

Thanks :)
 
The LC series only has IIe compatibility if they have the IIe compatability card installed. Not all do. Also, that card restricts you to 10MB of RAM, 24 bit addressing, and takes up the only available slot (though you could install more RAM and select whether to enable the IIe card or have 32 bit RAM addressing).

A IIgs is the best of the Apple II series as for capability, and there are many modern storage options available for it. Also, you can bootstrap a IIgs over the built-in serial port using ADTPro, you don't have to have any bootable disks. The IIgs also has much better Graphics and Sound (the gs part), making for some better games by today's standards (Tetris on the IIgs is one of the best). Also, the IIgs can be used with a SCART cable to connect to many monitors / TVs available in the UK.

As for a Mac, if you want to do early/mid 90's Mac gaming, I would get a Quadra series machine, with decent storage and RAM, and an Ethernet adapter. Or, a beige G3 tower, you could run much more on it, and still be compatible (via 68k emulation) with many of the older games/software.
 
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HoJoPo said:
The LC series only has IIe compatibility if they have the IIe compatability card installed. Not all do. Also, that card restricts you to 10MB of RAM, 24 bit addressing, and takes up the only available slot (though you could install more RAM and select whether to enable the IIe card or have 32 bit RAM addressing).

A IIgs is the best of the Apple II series as for capability, and there are many modern storage options available for it. Also, you can bootstrap a IIgs over the built-in serial port using ADTPro, you don't have to have any bootable disks. The IIgs also has much better Graphics and Sound (the gs part), making for some better games by today's standards (Tetris on the IIgs is one of the best). Also, the IIgs can be used with a SCART cable to connect to many monitors / TVs available in the UK.

As for a Mac, if you want to do early/mid 90's Mac gaming, I would get a Quadra series machine, with decent storage and RAM, and an Ethernet adapter. Or, a beige G3 tower, you could run much more on it, and still be compatible (via 68k emulation) with many of the older games/software.
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Hi thanks for your suggestion. I would love seriously to get a ][gs, but as I said, those are extremely rare and cripplingly pricey. Which is why I am tempted by a knock-down Mac LC with a card (although I imagine those are hard to find too!)

Seems like a Quadra is the optimal choice, then. Do they all have broadly similar compatibility or do the older ones suffer in any way?
 
Personally my favorite Apple ][ family machine is the ][+. They're still relatively affordable, at least compared to an original ][, but they are technically the same machine (for the most part) and thus have genuine "Oldschool Cred" that you can't quite match with the later models. It does somewhat limit you somewhat in the pool of software you can run, but there is a *lot* of software for the II series that targeted the "64k Apple II+" configuration.

The IIe is a good compromise if you can't get a ][+ cheap, it still has most of the oldschool feel and runs more software, but there's something special about knowing your machine is made completely out of off-the-shelf TTL ICs just like they did it back in the 70's, no stinkin' custom chips. ;)
 
As I said, I would love to have one, but they average about £200. I'm gunning for something under £100.
 
Would buying a IIgs from the US and using a 220V to 110V transformer work for you? They're cheaper and fairly common over here. If I recall correctly, it may be possible to modify the IIgs power supply to run on 220V.
 
Not that I can see on eBay.com - still showing priced well over a hundred pounds, not including shipping.
 
...So yeah, it seems clear to me that the only affordable options available to me are to get one of Apple's 1990s machines. So perhaps a Machintosh LC or some sort or a Quadra?
 
I have an LC2 and the IIe card

the LC2 is quite the turd for color macintosh programs, 16Mhz 32bit cpu on a 16 bit bus, limited to 10 meg of ram even without the iie card, but it does the job and fills the hole, but I would suggest an LC3 or better if going that route.

The apple IIe card works great, but those can be a bit pricey as well, make sure you get one with the Y cable so you can use a floppy drive and joystick. On my above mentioned machine the card was very slow using mac os 7.5.5 but runs just about spot on using 7.0.1 and I enjoy it very much
 
LC3 looks like a promising idea...also saw a Quadra 610. Is that a decent gaming machine? A lot seem to brag about having FPUs. Are they important for games?
 
dunno, never had one heh, as far as an FPU I added one to my LC2 as there was a unpopulated spot for it (socket and a trip to ebay later I have one without using my one card slot) but most games will not make use of it (flight sims might, excel does lol)

get the most mac you can, just make sure its compatible with the //e card if you want to use the //e card ... and a apple 5.25 inch disk drive for apple II software that wont run from hard disk
 
Thanks, good advice. The iie card looks almost as expensive as the iie itself though!

With your LC can you play most Mac games? Are there any that you can't play?

And how good are Power Macs at running the higher-end 68k games?
 
I havent ran across anything that it wont run

power mac's wont run 68k unless the program is compiled for both or some emulation method is provided

and yes iie card is expensive I lucked out on mine for ONLY 100 bucks posted
 
If you hunt around, LCs seem to come up with a IIe card now and then. It doesn't seem to significantly drive the price up unless the seller has tested everything. I had one for a while but found I never really used the IIe card.

Remember that if you get a LC(1,2,3) you will probably need to recap it, if it's not sold as having been recapped. It's not terribly difficult, but you will be working with surface mount parts.
 
Osgeld said:
power mac's wont run 68k unless the program is compiled for both or some emulation method is provided
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Uhm, no? PowerPC Macs *running the classic OS* (not OS X, versions 7.1.something through 9.2.2) run 68k software via a built-in emulator. In fact, prior to around 8.6 or so large parts of the OS itself were run via the 68k emulation.

(IE, a "PowerPC native" application might still utilize have to use the emulator process to respond to certain API calls because those parts of the OS hadn't been rewritten yet. It was a very clever system Apple came up with to nearly seamlessly mix PPC and 68k code but it contributed to the bad reputation some of the early Beige PowerMacs had for performance. In particular the early systems based on the PPC 603 CPU took a huge hit because the 68k emulator core was too big to fit in their small onboard RAM cache.)

Because of the need for emulation there are circumstances under which an early Beige Power Mac might be *slower* than a fast 68k like a Quadra, but that's a different issue. Broadly speaking any PowerPC Mac with PCI slots should "almost always" be faster than even the quickest Quadras, as Apple started using an improved 68k emulation engine using dynamic recompilation instead of static instruction translation. Connectix also released a 3rd party replacement for the Apple emulator that claims even better performance and works on the NuBus machines as well.
 
Personally i like the Macintosh classic - rather affordable (Usually much cheaper than other models with the same case design and more powerful) and imho one of the most iconic designs of apple. People who see it instantly know like "this is an apple". Yeah 68K, so not as vintage as the apple II, for sure. But compact and prolly one of the nicest decoration pieces if you're not using it.
 
Uhm, no? PowerPC Macs *running the classic OS* (not OS X, versions 7.1.something through 9.2.2) run 68k software via a built-in emulator
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power mac's wont run 68k unless the program is compiled for both or some emulation method is provided
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still stands, power pc's wont run 68k without fat binaries in which its running the ppc part, or its emulated, which sucks in speed, and usually doesnt work anyway, if you want to emulate 68k you are better off on a modern PC
 
Osgeld said:
still stands, power pc's wont run 68k without fat binaries in which its running the ppc part, or its emulated, which sucks in speed, and usually doesnt work anyway, if you want to emulate 68k you are better off on a modern PC
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Or an Amiga. Nothing runs MacOS as well as an Amiga.
 
gladders said:
With your LC can you play most Mac games? Are there any that you can't play?
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The LC and LC II are painful with most any game due to the crippled bus and slow CPU. There were 68030 upgrade cards available for it via the PDS slot to bump it up to 25/33 MHz, but you were still limited to 10 MB of RAM and lost the ability to have an ethernet card. The only two LCs in the pizza box style case you'd really want to get is either an LC III or III+. The difference between the two is the former has a 25 MHz CPU while the latter has a 33 MHz CPU. Though you can "chip" an LC III to run at 33 MHz with a slight motherboard modification and adding a heatsink to the 68030.

With any of the pizza box LCs, you're pretty much limited to simple 2D games that don't make use of heavy graphics. 3D games are pretty much out of the question unless you want to run in a tiny postage stamp size window at slideshow frame rates.

gladders said:
And how good are Power Macs at running the higher-end 68k games?
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PowerPC chips can't run 68k code without use of an emulator. Mac OS had a built-in 68k emulator for itself and applications, but there was a huge performance penalty. You generally didn't notice this in desktop applications, but games would run like molasses. An easy way to demonstrate is get a copy of Duke 3D Atomic Edition for the Macintosh which has both PPC and 68k binaries. Try running the 68k binary, it will take forever to load and give you like 1 frame a minute.
 
kyodai said:
Personally i like the Macintosh classic - rather affordable (Usually much cheaper than other models with the same case design and more powerful) and imho one of the most iconic designs of apple. People who see it instantly know like "this is an apple". Yeah 68K, so not as vintage as the apple II, for sure. But compact and prolly one of the nicest decoration pieces if you're not using it.
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I cover my SE with a cloth. I don't want anyone else to see it.
 
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