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What is the oldest Mac I can get with USB?

hunterjwizzard

hunterjwizzard

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Mar 20, 2020
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Just curious. I have a modern(ish) USB KVM I prefer to use along with adapters to attach to my modern gigantic monitor. I'm curious what the oldest Mac I can get that still attaches to modern USB.
 
If you want to use USB keyboard/mouse, the oldest will probably be the blue/white G3 tower. While you can add a USB controller to almost any PCI Mac, to have support when booting you'll need one that used USB keyboard/mouse.

I'd recommend a G4 Mac Mini, they're pretty reliable, inexpensive, and have DVI output that would be easy to adapt to a modern monitor. Edit: If you want to run Mac OS 9, it is possible though not supported to run it on a G4 Mac mini.
 
What if I didnt need support  while booting but was happy with it after the boot completes?
 
The oldest with PCI is the Power Macintosh 9500. You'll have to add a compatible PCI USB interface card. Also, the 9500 won't be able to run OSX.
 
HoJoPo said:
The oldest with PCI is the Power Macintosh 9500. You'll have to add a compatible PCI USB interface card. Also, the 9500 won't be able to run OSX.
Click to expand...

I already have a G4 dual-booting OS9 & OSX in my collection. I just thought it might be entertaining to add something even older to the mix.

thisisamigaspeaking said:
Why not use something like https://www.bigmessowires.com/usb-wombat/ and take your pick of old Macs with ADB?
Click to expand...

Obviously because I had never heard of such a thing. That would let me take an even older unit. Tell me, do these things talk to generic USB KVMs ok?
 
Looks like it does support USB hubs, and most KVM's appear as a hub to the host.

So with ADB support, the oldest you could use would be an Apple IIgs. But you'd have to get a scan converter to convert 15khz analog RGB to HDMI or something similar (they are available).

The Macintosh II would probably be the oldest Mac with ADB support.
 
HoJoPo said:
Looks like it does support USB hubs, and most KVM's appear as a hub to the host.
Click to expand...
Well maybe there is another adapter or some solution along those lines. It could certainly be made to work somehow with some degree of technical skill.
 
HoJoPo said:
So with ADB support, the oldest you could use would be an Apple IIgs. But you'd have to get a scan converter to convert 15khz analog RGB to HDMI or something similar (they are available).
Click to expand...

The video signal is the easy part. I've got very literal piles of converters on hand.
 
The *dumbest* old Mac with USB to run through your KVM would be the motherboard of an original Aqua Rev A/B 233mhz iMac. I had one of those modded to work with an ATX power supply back in the day; I kept intending to build some kind of cool case for it but after playing with it extensively I concluded that a 233mhz iMac stuffed into an ammo box, a bust of Leopold Stravinsky, or a skin shoplifted from Build-A-Bear workshop wouldn’t actually be a better computer than a regular 233mhz iMac.

(It is a trivial hack to do as long as in addition to the motherboard you save the breakout board that has the internal 15 pin Mac monitor connector. In the early 2000s you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a dead trayloader iMac; the power supplies/flyback transformer in the monitor sections were toast after only three years or so.)

Also, strictly speaking, this would be the oldest USB-included Mac. The B&W tower came out a couple months later.
 
HoJoPo said:
The oldest with PCI is the Power Macintosh 9500. You'll have to add a compatible PCI USB interface card. Also, the 9500 won't be able to run OSX.
Click to expand...

It can unofficially run OSX using XPostFacto, though I wouldn't recommend it without a G3 or G4 upgrade.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
The *dumbest* old Mac with USB to run through your KVM would be the motherboard of an original Aqua Rev A/B 233mhz iMac.
Click to expand...
Hmmm. This intrigues me. Not in a "I think it will be good" way, but more along the lines of it sounds like a bit of dumb fun. I'll have to look into it. Mostly so I can fill up that awkward hole on my rack with something fit to measure and bespoke :ROFLMAO:
 
hunterjwizzard said:
Hmmm. This intrigues me. Not in a "I think it will be good" way, but more along the lines of it sounds like a bit of dumb fun. I'll have to look into it. Mostly so I can fill up that awkward hole on my rack with something fit to measure and bespoke :ROFLMAO:
Click to expand...

You might have to hit archive.org to find them but the instructions were all over the web back then; like I said, it’s trivial, the only tricky part is the inverter you need to build for soft power to work. (The one I built using the single transistor design had a bad habit of “bouncing” awake again after shutdown with some PSUs.) Also you have to set your ambitions for how small of a box you can use reasonably; the motherboard is pretty small but a very weird shape and kind of tall because of the CPU card sandwich on top and bottom-mounted interface/power connector.

(Those picoATX power supplies we have now would probably work and help somewhat with the size problem?)

Also remember the tray loaders are the easy ones. People have done conversions for slot loaders (and even eMacs, *all* of them had unreliable-with-age monitors) but it’s a lot more involved.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
What is your obsession with being an ass everywhere?

OSX is over 20 years old, define vintage.
Click to expand...
Not being an ass. By your own admission OSX is not great on anything short of a G3.

Meanwhile, assuming apple is better at numbering things than microsoft, I estimate there should be 9 other OSs. At least one of those hopefully works a bit better.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
You might have to hit archive.org to find them but the instructions were all over the web back then; like I said, it’s trivial, the only tricky part is the inverter you need to build for soft power to work. (The one I built using the single transistor design had a bad habit of “bouncing” awake again after shutdown with some PSUs.) Also you have to set your ambitions for how small of a box you can use reasonably; the motherboard is pretty small but a very weird shape and kind of tall because of the CPU card sandwich on top and bottom-mounted interface/power connector.

(Those picoATX power supplies we have now would probably work and help somewhat with the size problem?)

Also remember the tray loaders are the easy ones. People have done conversions for slot loaders (and even eMacs, *all* of them had unreliable-with-age monitors) but it’s a lot more involved.
Click to expand...

The target size is about mini ATX. Probably can get it in there no problem. I just happen to have this one sort of awkward-shaped ATX tower that happens to be almost perfectly 9 Us high. Its sit on the bottom of a 32U rack and presently the space next to it is just sort of flapping in the breeze. Its juuuuust slightly too small for most full ATX towers(the one I have in there is the wide-body PSU on the side style) and too big for most mini-ATX systems. It haunts me in my dreams with its awkward size.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
The target size is about mini ATX.
Click to expand...

I made some progress in fitting it into a gutted (before I got to it) Sun Microsystems external disk enclosure that had the same footprint as a Sparcstation IPC, but shorter:

en.wikipedia.org

SPARCstation IPC - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

But it turned into a really tedious game of Tetris trying to get it all in there and I didn’t have the right tools at the time to fabricate all the support bits and cable stubs I’d need. And after playing with the iMac guts long enough to determine it really wasn’t good for anything other than playing Nanosaur under the classic MacOS I lost interest.

(I did really push the limits of what that thing could run, including PPC Linux, NetBSD, and OS X up to 10.3. It was just too slow to be interesting under any of those. I even interfaced a DVD drive to it at one point and demonstrated it was almost capable of playing movies. Aalllllllmost…)

These days with picoATX power supplies and tiny PATA->flash solutions readily available (and maybe a 3D printer to help with mounting hardware) it’d be a lot easier, so I dunno, I may slightly regret getting rid of it all. But only slightly.
 
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