My First Mac

Salvation Army Macs

Ian R. Campbell

Ian is a 17 year old high school student living in the Greater Tampa Bay area of Florida. He will be graduating in the class of 2000.

Here is the story of how I began using the Macintosh platform.

It was the spring of 1995, and I went to go thrift store shopping with my mother, or thrifting, and there was a Salvation Army that had just opened. They had a whole bunch of computer equipment come in. Since I had always used PC's, I knew little of Macs, though I was more into hardware at the time. They had a bunch of Mac Pluses, SEs, 512ks, a Classic, and even an old Lisa. Well, anyway, the Classic would not power up. As a result, he was ready to trash it, but since I was relatively curious about the Mac, I asked him if I could have it, even though it would not power up. He said I could have it, and since he was that nice to me, and I was worried if I needed parts, so I bought a Plus, an SE, and the Lisa (it was a conversation piece).

I got home, after spending $65 on Macintosh equipment, and showed everything to my father. He had even less experience with the Macintosh than I did, as at the time, I was in junior high school and took a typing class that utilized Mac Classic IIs.

We cracked the Mac Classic open, it had 2 MB RAM and a 40 MB hard drive. However, the machine would not power up. Later that evening I jiggled the power plug with a power cord in the socket of the power supply, and managed to get it to start. Apparently, the power supply's socket for a power cord got pushed in and did not make contact with the analog board. After $100 more invested, I had a computer that was more effective and made me more efficient than my then in use 386.

Since then, I have owned 2 PowerBooks, a Power Mac 7200, a Quadra, and several members of the Mac II family. I have been using the "perpetual upgrade path" for the last 3 years, buying a used Mac, using for 6 months to a year, selling it, and then adding money to that selling price and starting the cycle over again. However, there are 2 Macs that I have owned and actually do miss, the aforementioned Mac Classic and a PowerBook 180 that was the first notebook computer I ever owned.

Join us on Facebook!

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Mac IIfx, introduced 1990.03.19. This 'wicked fast' 40 MHz Mac trumped the 33 MHz DOS world.
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

Go to the My First Mac index.

Custom Search

Follow Low End Mac on Twitter
Join Low End Mac on Facebook

Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler 11 is now in the Mac App Store!! -- Special Introductory Price of $59.95!! -- To Buy From The Mac App Store Click Here Now!! Or buy direct from Strider Software.

Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker and Mac Casino applications in minutes.

Affiliates

Amazon.com
The Apple Store
The iTunes Store
PC Connection Express
GainSaver
Parallels Desktop for Mac
eBay

Advertise

Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2012 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPad iPhone, iMac, iPod, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
Advice is presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Email may be published at our discretion unless marked "not for publication"; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.