Extremely rare Apple Macintosh 128K with 'Twiggy Drive' listed for $100K on eBay
An extremely rare piece of Apple history has appeared for auction on eBay in the form of a Macintosh 128K, complete with a 5.25-inch "Twiggy" disk drive.
The seller is as the "world's oldest known complete Mac." Still in working order, the starting price on the auction is a whopping $99,995, with more than five days remaining to bid.
The Macintosh 128K was originally set to have a Twiggy floppy disk drive — a disk format developed by Apple during the creation of the Lisa. The disks, known as "FileWare," were similar to a standard 5.25-inch disk, but also had write windows on the top, and a label that ran down the side.
Though early prototypes of the Macintosh included Twiggy disks, they were eventually removed. Instead, Apple chose to go with the 3.5-inch floppy disk created by Sony, as Twiggy drives proved to be unreliable.
"To date, only bits and pieces of the original 'Twiggy Drive' Macintosh have ever surfaced... A motherboard here, a plastic case there, but never a complete machine or example," the eBay seller wrote. "This is the only one! The computer and keyboard are authentic and original, dated 1982-83. The computer and its keyboard were acquired together and complete, and have not been pieced together from miscellaneous parts."
The seller said that the Macintosh 128K powers on, chimes, and then prompts the user to insert a boot disk. A Lisa-formatted Twiggy disk does not boot the computer. Without a Macintosh Twiggy disk, the computer will not boot.
The goes by the handle "wozniac," but noted they are not Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple. The seller said they live in Canada and have had the same eBay ID since 2007.
As of Thursday afternoon, there have not been any bids on the rare Macintosh 128K. Pictures of the device are included below, and more can be seen at the .
[ View article on AppleInsider ]
Comments
If other blog sites are to be believed, it is the one and only Woz selling this.
That's ridiculous. Woz doesn't need the money, and he's never shown great interest in collecting large amounts of it. If he had it, he would have donated it to a museum.
Found this by Googling the PCB serial #
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcfo...p/t-29001.html
Yep compared the hand written Eprom codes and it is the same machine
If other blog sites are to be believed, it is the one and only Woz selling this.
Three things that make think this is not being sold by Steve Wozniak:
And even if it was Woz it wouldn't make any sense to him to sell it for $100,000 unless it was going to charity which the auction doesn't say so.
What is that guy in a trench coat logo next to the keyboard? It is also drawn on the memory PCB.
Found this by Googling the PCB serial #
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcfo...p/t-29001.html
Yep compared the hand written Eprom codes and it is the same machine
That guy is Mister Macintosh!
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py..._Macintosh.txt
That guy is Mister Macintosh!
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py..._Macintosh.txt
Hey thanks for wasting one of your two posts since 2007 on me. Muchas Gracias!
Hey thanks for wasting one of your two posts since 2007 on me. Muchas Gracias!
Heh? True, while I'm fairly active on other forums, I don't really know why but around here I'm more of an occasional lurker. Still, glad you enjoyed that piece of history!
Heh… True, while I'm fairly active on other forums, I don't really know why but around here I'm more of an occasional lurker. Still, glad you enjoyed that piece of history!
After reading that story it occurred to me that the old rumor floating around that Steve never really liked the name Macintosh now appears to be bogus.
I wonder what a PC from 1982 goes for on Ebay?
I think that it's safe to say that most Macs do not end up in a dumpster somewhere. I still have my old Macs that are more than a decade old. How many people with old PC's are still keeping those alive?
When somebody goes to buy an iPad, iPhone, Mac or any Apple product today, they can rest assured that Apple is not going to have a firesale 3 weeks later and they see the retail price on their brand new product plummet by hundreds of percentage points down.
Can you imagine the suckers who bought the first Xoom's for around $700-$800?
It's a thing of beauty. But no practical value.
Like many collectibles that command premium prices. So what's your point? Whether it's an old $100K Mac or the $250m Blue Hope Diamond it serves zero purpose yet people pay top dollar for it.
I hope whoever buys this Mac has it put into a museum of some sort. It's a great piece of history and should be enjoyed by all.
I also like how the keyboard looks -- it looks much closer to an Apple II/II+ keyboard than to what shipped with the final version. The font looks different and it actually says Command instead of just the command logo still used in the menus today.
I remember spending a lot of time with a 512ke in high school that I got as pay for a part time job -- seeing these pics brings back a lot of memories
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/...res-medium.jpg
Steve is middle column fourth from the top
Woz is right column fifth from the bottom
More good stuff
http://library.stanford.edu/mac/primary/docs/pr5.html
Three things that make think this is not being sold by Steve Wozniak:
As I said clearly, 'if other blog sites are to be believed.' I had my own doubts whether it was Wozniak or not, but I didn't particularly care.