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Vintage Macintosh Question...
Esh
Tending bar. FFXIV. Motorcycles.Portland, ORRegistered User regular
Tending bar. FFXIV. Motorcycles.Portland, ORRegistered User regular
I'm kicking around the idea of buying either a Color Classic II, SE/30, or something from the LC 500 line for some vintage gaming. As long as they're running system 7 or 8 they'll all run the same games, correct?
Also, besides Ebay, is there a good resource for buying them?
Also, besides Ebay, is there a good resource for buying them?
Esh on
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If you buy one make sure to buy like two or three because the monitor controller cards in those things burn out spontaneously.
Before I cleaned out I had 3 SE/30's. All three would post but I had to scrounge the monitor controllers out of two of them to keep the last one working. You know they've burned when all you can get them to draw is this sorta squished checkerboard pattern.
As for buying them... well maybe a decade ago the place to go was university surplus stores but at this point yeah eBay or craigslist is probably your best bet.
As for OS's... 8 changed a bunch of stuff. If you're looking to play System 6 / 7 stuff you probably want OS 7.6. OS 8 started to add lots of stuff for PPC and wider color palettes so stuff written for 8 often won't work on 7.6 or older. Also, 7.6 was the last version to really have GOOD support for nib disc images*. By the time OS 8 came out the Apple II emulator wasn't really being maintained.
*It was the last OS I was able to manage to play Earth Orbit Stations** on.
** If Elite was the predecessor of EVE Online, then EOS was it's ANCESTOR; complex, poorly documented, and jews in space.
Definitely stick with system 7. I'd also suggest *not* getting an AIO machine like the SEs or classics.
Do you think this is too much to pay for a LC III?
I do at some point have my heart set on a nice working LC 500 series or a Color Classic II, but in the meantime I guess I wouldn't mind "the pizza box".
Do you know a good resource for finding games?
The integrated monitors are ALWAYS the weakest link with pre-iMac models. The disk drives can give out due to neglect but the monitor controllers are always the first thing to actually fail outright; and they do.
Looks like another IIci or even a quadra 700 can be had relatively cheap. If I do pick one up, how hard is it to go dig up software for these?
Not hard to find crummy downloads but a lot of the stuff back in the day was shareware and in many cases the publishers simply won't exist anymore.
The typical mac user in the 90's purchased software because mac shareware was much more annoying about demanding payment, and simultaneously often worth paying for.
Towards the end in the 8/9 days the best selling shareware was Kaleidoscope, which just gave you the ability to override the window styles; it didn't functionally do anything helpful but it was cool so people paid for it.
It's a 15 pin VGA connector that's been squished into two rows of 8 and 7. You can buy simple pin-mapping adapter bricks and run it in 8 bit VGA mode, or use an apple LC monitor and run it at less then VGA resolution at full 16 bit color.
Is an LC III needed for most stuff pre-92? There's this LC on Ebay with the Apple II card that looks pretty nice.
Ebay is definitely not the best place to look for this stuff. It used to be a great place to score gear but it's filled with scrappers/dealers and dreamers just fishing for fools with too much money. Craigslist, boot sales, ham swapmeets... you'll get much more for much less if you're lucky. The last LCIII I got had a cache card, PMMU fitted and I got it for free. My last free score was a ton of atari stuff, 600XL, 130XE, Indus GT drive, foo. Good things come to those who wait!
This place carries (or did one or two years ago) a shit load of old Macs with monitors. They also have old software too. I bought a SE and a LC520 from these guys when I was in high school.
Its a good place to go because they are going to have all the hardware and adapters you need and you will also be able to turn the machine on and check it out in the store.
Vintage Mac road trip!
Not a bad idea. Maybe I'll give them a call.