Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

My First Mac

SEs and Classics and PowerBooks, Oh My!

Marco Maggiora - 2000.06.14

It's just a year since we began My First Mac. This is the 41st article in the series - and more stories keep coming in. We'd be pleased to know your story.

In 1995, we got an old Apple IIe with an Apple /// monitor, some old NEC dot-matrix printer, I'm not sure, I was to young to remember (as I was being only 6, now I am 11), and I loved it. We also had a joystick, I was told it is from 1978, but then at a garage sale, we sold it. (What were we thinking!?)

In July 1996, we went to my aunt's house. She has a Performa 6360, and there was an old Mac SE next to it. She just gave us the SE, and we drove back to San Francisco with HyperCard 1.01, Microsoft Word 4, Excel, and lots of other software.

I think was a special SE, because it had a stock 40 MB hard drive and System 4.3.

Then, after a long time, I got a Classic II from my school. It had 4 MB of memory and a 40 MB hard drive. I put System 7.5 on it. Big mistake! With 4 MB of memory, it takes a full 5 minutes to start!

In August 1999, I went to my godparents house. My godfather had a PowerBook 3400c/240. On a little table, I saw a little, thin dark gray thing. It had an Apple logo! I was attracted. I asked him, "What is this?" He opened it, and there it was: a PowerBook 140! At this point, I was itching to get it. After spending the night, he said yes. He took the SCSI adapter and hooked up an external LaCie 50 MB drive and backed up everything. It was mine -- an old PowerBook with a 15 minute battery was mine! I literally brought it everywhere with me.

In January 2000, he came to our house. He told me the La Cie drive was mine, and he also was carrying a big blue bag. I thought he had brought his PowerBook, but no! Ooooo! An SE/30!

The only reason he gave it to me because it was "broken." Nope. It booted! Wow! Quicken 6, Excel 4, Word 5, System 7.0.1, 8 MB of memory, 80 MB hard drive, Aldus PageMaker 4.2. I was soooo happy!

But after we went out for breakfast, there was a tragedy. The screen, instead of a nice gray, there was one big white line!

I called a store that will troubleshoot free, as opposed to the 50 buck fee that Apple charges. He walked me through it. He told me what was wrong and to bring it up there. He opened the case. Ah! It looked really weird. He took a ball point pen and circled a couple of connections. There were cracks around them! My dad re-soldered them, as I barely knew how to solder. We put it all back together, as I prayed, and it worked.

But there was one more problem: a bad F-line! Ah, crud, I have to install a new system! My friend and I took the Finder out of the System Folder, and I accidentally restarted it. Now I have to get a stinking boot disk!

I suddenly remembered! My LaCie Tsunami! But it had never worked with the SE/30.

Well, it is worth a try. It worked! But that video card! I wish that thing knew there was no monitor connected! Right now, it takes me an hour to get the monitors control panel on the internal screen.

To make a long story short, I was anxious and bored. Then in early March, I called that store. He said he had a PowerBook 165c with a broken daughterboard. I wanted it. I got it. I was happy. I was also sick. I had bought an Apple CD 300 for 20 bucks at that store. That is how I got it System 7.5.3. And right now, it is downstairs, but still being used pretty much every day.

The Classic II is mostly for my brother. The SE only gets used occasionally. Every port on the SE/30 is used. I have a Global Village 14.4 modem, an Apple 800k external floppy drive, the LaCie Tsunami hard drive, an Apple Color OneScanner, the AppleTalk cable to the PowerBook 140, and the ADB ports. I am trying to make an Apple Museum, but I am not nearly as far as some people.

Links for the Day

Recent Content

Recent Deals

Go to the My First Mac index.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice 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.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." 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.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, 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.