Valuable / Collectible Early Mac's

[zombienerd]

I'm meeting up with an older gentlemen tomorrow afternoon to check out his collection of older Mac's. He didn't know the models, but said they were the "old box style all in one type" machines from the 80's / early 90's. I'm guessing it's the original Mac / Plus / 128 types, but there may be newer ones.

He runs the computer department at the local charity thrift store, and holds zero interest or knowledge of the value and/or collectability of older machines. He straight up told me he just throws away anything that comes into the shop that is more than 6 years old. My jaw dropped and told him to keep anything pre-2000, and I'd at least give them $5 for any machine that old, so it's more money to their church.

He mentioned that he had several old macs in his storage shed, and while I'm not a big Mac guy, he said he was just going to scrap them eventually, so I figured I'd take a look and offer a few bucks for them.


What should I look for? What models were more collectible? If he'll take 5-10 bucks each, I'll probably grab all of them. Worst case scenario (if none of them work), I can part them out to you guys. I'm hoping there might be a few gems that are salvageable, I'd love to play with an old mac or two.

 

[Juror22]

Compact-ish Apples that are moderately collectible or interesting
Macintosh XL (basically a Lisa, which are definitely worth a few bucks these days)
Macintosh (original 128 with or without '128' on the case)
Macintosh 512
Macintosh 512KE
Macintosh SE/30
Macintosh Classic II
Macintosh Color Classic

Kinda everything but the Mac Plus and the Mac SE, but even those are handy to have for their spare parts - speaking of spare parts, older mechanical keyboards, original mice and disk drives should not be overlooked.

 

[ScutBoy]

If they are really in the <$20 range, I would say grab as many as you can. Like land, they aren't making any more, and you will find buyers at double your money or more depending on model - even for parts machines, unless they've been stored under a leak in the roof, or become mouse houses

if you can get a list and/or pictures to share, that would be cool.

 

[zombienerd]

Well, here we go! I gave him $100 for the lot, and he expressed that was more than he was expecting. I still left with a smile.

I still have to pick up 3 more known working machines from him with monitors (he's clearing off any personal data) - Two Performa 5xx series, and a Macintosh 2 CX (These were included with the price)

Included Loads of software, a butchered (what looks to be SCSI) DEC Tape Drive (turned into external HDD), and two 8 bit PC Bus Mouse cards as well.

The pictures include:
Two Mac Plus
Two Mac SE
Apple IIGS
Parts Performa box (just missing HDD, but supposedly works fine besides that)
Empty Mac 2 CX box that houses spare cables, modems, and the like.
Keyboards, Mice.
Color Stylewriter 1500 Printer
Spare RAM, Floppy Drives, and more.

 

[zombienerd]

He also stated that he has several hard drives and other accessories (keyboards, mice) squirreled away that I can take as well, if he can find them.

 

[zombienerd]

Status update:

The IIgs works great after I cleaned the floppy heads. It didn't want to boot until I did so. I was able to play a few games on it.

The two Mac Plus machines both power on, and display a Floppy Icon with a question mark, I'm assuming they're looking for boot media. My contact is still looking for his 3.5" floppies for the macs, so I'm holding out hope I'll be able to play with them soon.

One of the Mac SE's has some sort of accelerator installed, and displays it on the boot screen, I should have written it down. I can hear a hard drive spin up, but it also just sits on the Floppy Icon with the Question Mark.

The other Mac SE is a dual 800k floppy unit. Also, Floppy Icon.

I don't have a monitor to test the Performa 6xxx machine, but I opened it up and it looks pretty clean inside. I powered it on, and was able to open/close the CD drive, but that's about it. When I pick up the next load, I'll be getting two monitors that work on that machine. Looks to take a 50 pin SCSI drive of some sort.

All of the machines need a good external cleaning. I feel dirty after moving them around. The interiors, however, are near mint.

 

[zombienerd]

I've been playing with the IIgs all night 70% of the discs I received turned out to be moldy, and keep gumming up the heads.

Is there any way to clean the discs without damaging the material?

I'm leaving the floppy drive apart until I test all the floppies and sort good from bad, I've had to clean the heads about 15 times so far.

 

[Caluser2000]

Once they are moldy that is it, they're trash. Its easy enough to see on the disk.

 

[DFinnigan]

70% of the discs I received turned out to be moldy, and keep gumming up the heads.
Is there any way to clean the discs without damaging the material?

Yeah, don't use any abrasive. ;-)
You can use distilled water and run that around the disk, or you could use isopropanol, which is what I use. If you don't care about potentially wrecking the label, you could conceivably douse one or several disks in a tub of warm water and swish around.

But you gotta stay on that drive head!!!

Once it gets some grit on it and scratches a track on a disk, that's it: you're done. You'll never recover that track. So when you have known-dirty disks, you need to check very frequently to make sure your head is clean and it's not scratching your disks.

 

[Chuck(G)]

I've dealt with mold. It can be done.

Use distilled water and mild surfactant--you'll have to discard the jacket in any case--there's no cleaning that--just clean the cookie.

Allow to dry thoroughly Bake at 58C for a day and place in a clean jacket. If there's any squealing, apply a thin layer of cyclomethicone and read immediately.

You asked.

 

[SomeGuy]

Is there any way to clean the discs without damaging the material?

It depends on what your objective is.
If you are purely looking for data recovery, chuck's method is the most professional, and ensures the best results.

But if you have a non-unique, but collectible, factory original software disk, you might not want to cut it up.

5.25" disks are fairly easy to clean out. I just run hot water (no hotter than you can touch) in around the central hub. Left, right, front, back all about a minute or two. If done carefully, it is possible to avoid getting a label wet. Areas with very high mineral content might consider following up with some distilled water.

The main trick is getting it dry. I carefully prop up the jacket around the hub with q-tips, and place it in front of a fan in a clean dry place. Be careful not to put too much pressure on the cookie with the q-tips or you can dent it or cause it to stick to the jacket lining.

Once dry, visually inspect while manually rotating the cookie. If any spots remain, address them with a q-tip.

I'd avoid using alcohol as that tends to discolor the surface, and can wind up removing oxide when there is a small scratch or existing flaking. But sometimes really tough junk requires using alcohol.

3.5" disks are more difficult to clean. There is no good way to get them dry. If just opening the shutter and wiping the surface with a q-tip isn't enough, then the the only option is removing the cookie.

Even if the disk becomes fully readable, you probably won't want to rely on or re-use such poorly stored disks. You will want to hunt down some unused floppies from eBay. (Or wuss out and get some kind of floppy drive emulator )

 

[Starshadow]

As far as value, Even though SEs and Pluses aren't as valuable as the others, they're still fun little machines to restore and play around with.

 

[olePigeon]

They're not valuable, per se, but they're great machines. The Plus is nice because it's the last of the original style Macintosh computers, just more convenient. Has a SCSI port which makes using it a lot easier, and actually has enough RAM to run programs.

SE is a great System 6 machine. A good transitional computer between "modern" 68k machines and the original Macintosh line. Useful for working with original Macintosh software and files and getting them onto modern machines.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

I wish I wasn't so poor as to get a working SE myself. I still have the upgrade board I pulled from my dead SE 20 years ago which gets it up to a 68030@25 MHz and 16 MB of RAM.

 

[3pcedev]

One of the Mac SE's has some sort of accelerator installed, and displays it on the boot screen, I should have written it down. I can hear a hard drive spin up, but it also just sits on the Floppy Icon with the Question Mark.

I'm guessing its a Radius accelerator. I have one in my SE; the common one upgrades it from a 68000 to a 68020 @ 16MHz. There are others which upgrade to a 68030 but they are less common. Runs well and makes it much faster than a Classic; but less than an SE/30. While you get a decent speed boost it's kinda cancelled by the lack of ram though. The SE maxes out at 4MB whereas you can run ridiculous amounts in something like an SE/30 (around 128MB IIRC).

Also don't forget to replace the PRAM batteries in the all in one macs. The SE's have them soldered on; however they still are prone to leak and damage the boards. You can either replace them with another soldered battery; or install a battery holder on or off board. Be careful if you install a battery holder on the board; the clearance between the board and chassis (and the accelerator) is extremely tight in an SE. You might end up fouling on something. Also note the SE came standard with a 3.0V Lithium battery (NOT the 3.6V used in the later models).

The Plus also has a PRAM battery; but it's accessible from a panel at the rear of the case. It's a sort of AA sized thing; but slightly different. These can also leak and make a massive mess....

 

[zombienerd]

I'm guessing its a Radius accelerator.

Radius 16, indeed.

Both SE machines appear to have had their batteries replaced at some point. Both are very clean, and test good. I might clip them anyway because I'm not sure how old they are.

I'm still scouring for cheap boot media. I found a site online, but $10 for a boot floppy seems a little steep. If anyone would be willing to ship me a set or two of 800k floppies with 6.0.8, I'd be most grateful, and would throw a few bucks your way to cover media and shipping.

Turns out neither SE had a HDD inside. The sound I swore was a HDD was just a loud fan. :/ One is labeled as a twin 800k unit, the other labelled as a single 800k + 20mb HDD (this is the one with the Radius). I did receive a 4.3gb Barracuda 4 drive with the lot; it either doesn't seem to have the OS installed, or I have it set up incorrectly. I'm not even sure how it's supposed to be terminated / jumpered to connect to the SE. It may have even come from a later machine. Do the SE's have a maximum HDD size? Would the 4.3gb drive even work in the SE? Maybe I'll luck out on my return trip and my contact will have found some more SCSI HDD's :D

While playing around, one of the Plus units popped a large component on the power supply (appeared to be a resistor or inductor), I shut it off immediately after smelling the smoke. I'll get pictures later if anyone is interested. The funny thing is the machine was still running when I hit the switch.

 

[IlikeTech]

Yep, a line filter cap. They need to be changed, but it isn't that big a deal. Ask around and someone will tell you what cap it is. I could probably send you some 800k diskettes! PM Me