Macintosh 128k Vintage Computer Review

This was my first ever encounter with a computer (sometimes brought home from work by my dad). I was 6 years old and instantly loved it. I played Dark Castle, Pyramid of Ra, Shuffle Puck, and Shadow gate from what I can remember. I still think its amazing how beautiful they made Dark Castle look, even though it was black and white on a tiny screen. It was a scary game for a six year old though, and pretty hard :) good times good times.

I used that computer in high school. they replace all of them in the computer lab with the new I mac when it came out. I remember I use to play the first Sim City on that one when I was board. and loading the 2 floppy drives. Now students carry a USB flash drive.

In the early 1980s, most computers were unruly and complicated beasts. And once you had the program open, the only practical way to interact with it was with the keyboard. This was the case across the board for computer manufacturers, Taking cues from the Xerox Star, it used a graphical user interface, or GUI. Along with an input device to use it, known as a mouse. And it ultimately failed to make a dent in the marketplace. 

But in 1984 came something that changed the face of computers forever. The Macintosh. It used the same GUI and mouse as the Lisa, but came in smaller, more affordable package. It sold quite well and went on to inspire Microsoft Windows, GEM and a host of other OSes. When looking to acquire one, be aware that the machine is also known as the 128K, or Macintosh 128.

The machine was essentially the same thing, just retroactively labeled the 128K to differentiate between it and the recently released 512K. There are several other models which came later like the Plus and the SE, though they can mostly run the same programs. 

I got my original Macintosh for $50 I got it from an ad on Craigslist from a guy who had bought the machine around May of 1984, just a few months after it was released. It didn’t come with a mouse or keyboard, so I had to get those separately on eBay. In total, it came to $90 for a complete machine.

The model number is M-0100 and can vary between beige and platinum gray colors. There is also the 128 keyboard, which can be difficult to find. Which includes a numeric keypad? The keyboard itself isn’t so hard to find as the cord is.

It uses a detachable cord that looks just like a phone cord, but it isn’t. It’s actually wired differently and while you can make your own keyboard cord using a phone cord, having the original is just pro and will save you a lot of trouble. The Mac itself contains 128K of RAM an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, a 3.5 floppy drive and no hard drive. The only way to get input into the machine is by booting into MacOS from a 400K system disk.

This can also be another pain if yours didn’t come with the disks, since it uses that odd Macintosh file structure for 400K disks that aren’t useable on PCs. And even if you have a later Macintosh with a 3.5 drive, you’ll need a proper disk image, special software and the correct OS version to write it to a disk that is readable. Once it loads the OS, you can then swap disks to run a program. 

Naturally, being as this only has 128 KB of RAM and the slowest 68000 processor, you are really limited to what you can run. Mine came with a third-party 2MB RAM expansion with a SCSI port in the back, and I could also attach an external SCSI drive if I wanted. While this is not necessary, its actually quite nice to have and it was apparently a pretty common upgrade. And thanks to its appliance-like design, setting up and starting the machine is amazingly simple.

Door opens

Click

Sweeps and crashes

Thud

Snap

Plug

Snap

Click

Beep

Groovy...

However, loading a program can be a huge hassle. Now the MacOS GUI is great and certainly makes things really nice and easy when compared to a command line interface.

For instance, you’ll need to load part of a game, but then maybe the OS will need some information, so you’ll need to swap disks again. It gets old instantly. And you can’t run more than one thing at once at all, so you can’t just load something into RAM and be done with it. You’ll need to swap those disk for anything that’s not on the operating system disk, which is probably just about everything, and then swap again once you’re done.

And probably a couple of times in between that. Seriously, you almost need to get an external drive like the M-0130, or its just impossibly aggravating. So, what can you actually do with the thing? Well, if somehow you haven’t noticed, it houses a built-in 9 monochrome display, so you won’t be seeing any colors.

Uh, unless you drop some acid first, I guess. This screen was the real killer feature that made the Macintosh attractive, as computers like the IBM XT were still using low-res CGA, so any graphic and design applications were really fruitless endeavors. But the screen really is tiny, so it not very well suited for serious graphical work. And there’s no real sound either, other than some simple bleeps and bongs.

Bleep

Bong

Well, you can use MacWrite to write about how since you now own a Mac, Or you can use MapPoint to create delightfully postmodern digital Banksy rip-offs. Do watch out though, as I discovered participating in such activities on a Mac can have undesirable side effects. Macintosh chime

Curse you, Steve Jobs!! though they can be extremely difficult to find nowadays. so most of the games will require more RAM or more processing power to run.

But there a few notable titles, and here are some of those for the 128.

Bleeps and Bongs

Bleep

Blip

Bleeps

Bong

Various bleeps and/or bongs

Blips

Explosion

Walk Like an Egyptian riff

Blips

Eh, like I said, these games can be seriously hard to find. Mostly what I’ve done is perused the wonderful Macintosh Garden website. It may be of dubious legality, but the site is awesome and the files come in a format that can usually be written to disk on other Macs with an Internet connection and a disk drive.

And of course, it’s always worth mentioning that there are a few notable emulators for the system, like Mini iMac, which really do a good job of emulating the machine. So, is the original Apple Macintosh 128 worth buying or not?

Well that depends *completely* on what you want it for. As far as historical value is concerned, it’s extremely valuable... historically. Tons of collectors want this thing. I’ve seen it go for a couple of hundred dollars for just a system. So, in that regard, yes. It’s very, very collectible.

But on the other hand, it does practically nothing. Most of the games that I showed earlier I had to download, and then when I did, most of it didn’t even work. I only showed a few that I actually got to work. Most simply didn’t run. And it is an absolute endless pain to try to get those disks written, even on a later Macintosh. But don’t take that to mean that I hate the 128.

I don’t. I just think it’s useless. If you want something for historical value, if you’re a true collector, then yes. Get the 128 by all means because it is the first Macintosh. But if you just want to play some games, or mess around with the software or Apple Mac stuff on the 68K processor systems, then get an SE or something that’ll actually do some things without a ton of hassle and weird disk formats.