12 years ago I acquired this old Macintosh from Otis, the Art School I was attending to at the time. I used to work part time at the computer lab there and this little machine was sitting in a closet collecting dust until I asked to take it home. Since then I have never been able to use it for lack of an Operating System. It turns out, the OS, the applications and it’s documents all get saved to 400k floppies, something virtually impossible to find nowadays. And I was never really sure what model exactly this computer was since it just says Macintosh on it. I eventually gave up on the quest of finding floppies and the Mac was stored away in a closet. Going from apartment to apartment and finally to our current home’s garage. Last week I decided, after many years of retirement, it was time to open it up and see if I can pull a Serang by replacing the innards with that of an iMac SE and a flat display from an IBM ThinkPad.
To my surprise I found all these signatures inside the box and realized this was no ordinary vintage Mac, this was model M0001, the very first Macintosh model ever built. So now I have a dilemma, do I continue the original plan of hacking it? or do i restore it back to it’s 128k glory?
NOTE ADDED: When I say the very first Mac model I am saying the first generation of the Mac not the very first individual unit.
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What a find! Congratulations. Do whatever you want with it, just don’t completely destroy it. ;)
I have a 512ke case which also has the sigs in it. Apple did this for all of the beige Macs… at least through the 512Ke… not sure if they are found in the MacPlus case… so, at least the 128K, 512K and 512Ke have it…
the whole macintosh 128k series has the model number M0001 – because its the first macintosh Model – NOT the first build mac”
the 512K Mac has the Model number M0001W/E or K. Note: its a MODEL Number, not a SERIAL Number.
macintosh Plus (january 8-90) has Model Number M0001A.Macintosh II has M5000, the blue/white G3 has Model Number M5183 and so on … and the whole Mac(PLus) Series, MAcSE etc … has the engraved signatures inside.
Sorry, buts its an simple macintosh from the first mac Series – nothing special, but Enjoy anyway :-)
Looks like M0001′s are going for near a grand on ebay. Restore it!!!
Definitely restore!
Wow! I bet you can find the parts on eBay…maybe the floppies too.
What a cool thing to find out you have!
In fact, this guy is selling his restored M0001 for $895.00. Good Golly!
ebay.com
kai, from what i had read, the signatures where only on the first generation of the m0001.
btw, for those curious, i am using Lightbox JS v2.0 for my images. It is a javascript app that uses Prototype and Scriptaculous. and involves absolutely no code on my part except adding a rel=”lightbox” parameter on my a tag.
Restore it.
There will ALWAYS be the fascination of DIY modifications of old devices: taking old shells and dropping-in contempoary small components. Why? Because YOU CAN. It’s our great chance to play Industrial Designer for a day.
I mean, really, you could do the same thing to a $100 13″ color TV/VCR combo from Wal-Mart. Or use the Mini for your car stereo. Or mod a refridgerator, ad absurdum.
What I really want is a wood computer;) You know, get a great piece of turned wood for the iMac G4 base, wooden keys with a mellow clickety-click and they only get better with age & use…