• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Just Picked up a Mac Colour Classic at World of Commodore :)

waltermixxx

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2015
Messages
132
Location
Canada
Yes very odd, but there in the corner was a rather nice guy showing some stuff. One of the things was a MacIntosh Colour Classic.
Very nice condition, no yellowing, complete with keyboard mouse... :) I asked if it was for sale, expecting him to say "what, are you nuts?"
but he said it was, I asked how much and when he told me the price, I snatched it up. It was a good deal. :) he even threw in a scsi cdrom drive. :)

Needless to say I was thrilled. :)

I've upgraded the RAM to 6megs (from the original 4megs) and will buy 2 4meg sims to replace the 1 meg sims i had handy.
I'm thinking about getting a network card for it.

Just wondering what kind of upgrades other Colour Classic owners have done.

Cheers.
 
Well, you have a number of options. The Color Classic's motherboard is very, very limited. It'll only recognize up to 10 MBs of RAM, and has a relatively slow CPU. A lot of people swap out the motherboard for one from an LC 575 or similar. It's a drop-in replacement (though the rear cover will not work because the ports are different ... but there are replacements available if it really bothers you. Or you can modify the LC 575 panel and make it fit by chopping off the top.)

A popular mod is to increase the resolution of the monitor from 512×384 to a full 640x480 so you can actually use many of the apps and games that require a minimum of 640x480. There's the quick & dirty (relatively) easy way described here, or, you can do it the "correct" way as detailed here.

If you want to keep it all original, the best upgrade for it is a Sonnet Presto Plus, though they're relatively rare and I haven't seen one on eBay in ages.

The non-Plus version is incompatible with the VRAM in a Color Classic.
 
thank you for the links on the 640x480 mods, those may come in handy. :)

I think the Mystic upgrades are getting as hard to find as the Colour Classic.

:) thanks again. :)
 
The sheer cost to make the color classic useable was the reason I got rid of mine. As has been mentioned there's a number of hardware modifications that need to be done and a full board swap. This was made no more fun by how fragile the plastics of a Color Classic are. I ended up giving it away in exchange for a 5200CD with the TV/video option. The color classic was essentially a Classic II with a color screen.
 
I wonder if it is still worth upgrading a Classic from one obsolete computer to another obsolete computer by doing a Takky or Mystic mod? One could simply appreciate the Colour Classic for what it was and could do.

My CC has an Apple IIe compatibility card, and a Farrolon Ethernet card (though only one PDS slot card can be used at a time) - these Farralon cards as of 2017 run about $12 on eBay.

A Big Mess Floppy Emu is a handy way to bootstrap, although instead using a SD card extension on a SCSI2SD allows one to simply plug the "hard drive" SD card into a modern mac for file transfers. My real SCSI drive died shortly after whistling like a Banshee for a couple of minutes, so I added the SCSI2SD offering 8 2GB drive partitions as the main system drive.

A visit to the Macintosh Garden will keep you busy for a while.
 
My CC has an Apple IIe compatibility card, and a Farrolon Ethernet card (though only one PDS slot card can be used at a time) - these Farralon cards as of 2017 run about $12 on eBay.

Many years ago, I remember some dude had a crackerbox mac that did some heavy modifications to allow several PDS cards to be daisy chained end to end. He had a picture of the machine running with the case removed and it was rather weird to see 3-4 cards stacked end to end poking up between the analog board and the CRT neck. I think it was a color classic, but it had been so heavily modded that I don't remember exactly.
 
I believe that the Color Classic (and the LC line general, on which the CC was based) had 3 IDs reserved for PDS devices, but it only had 1 slot.

There's a relatively rare upgrade for the LC that gave you 2 additional PDS slots for up to 3 cards in a single LC.

Realistically, you're probably remembering an SE/30. They had a single combination PDS/NuBUS slot. You could have 3 or even 4 cards stuffed inside that thing. Usually an ethernet card, video card, and a CPU accelerator.
 
I believe that the Color Classic (and the LC line general, on which the CC was based) had 3 IDs reserved for PDS devices, but it only had 1 slot.

There's a relatively rare upgrade for the LC that gave you 2 additional PDS slots for up to 3 cards in a single LC.

Realistically, you're probably remembering an SE/30. They had a single combination PDS/NuBUS slot. You could have 3 or even 4 cards stuffed inside that thing. Usually an ethernet card, video card, and a CPU accelerator.

Pretty sure it wasn't an SE/30 since it had a color screen, unless the guy hacked in one of those too.
 
I had to laugh when I read the below, Towmater is totally right, I think I will leave it as is, (re cap it, replace the battery) and leave it at that. :) It's a charming little computer.

Well put. :)

cheers.



I wonder if it is still worth upgrading a Classic from one obsolete computer to another obsolete computer by doing a Takky or Mystic mod? One could simply appreciate the Colour Classic for what it was and could do.

My CC has an Apple IIe compatibility card, and a Farrolon Ethernet card (though only one PDS slot card can be used at a time) - these Farralon cards as of 2017 run about $12 on eBay.

A Big Mess Floppy Emu is a handy way to bootstrap, although instead using a SD card extension on a SCSI2SD allows one to simply plug the "hard drive" SD card into a modern mac for file transfers. My real SCSI drive died shortly after whistling like a Banshee for a couple of minutes, so I added the SCSI2SD offering 8 2GB drive partitions as the main system drive.

A visit to the Macintosh Garden will keep you busy for a while.
 
Back
Top