Help me welcome a Mac Plus to the family

placeboplacebo
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
This morning, I was taking a walk in my neighborhood, and I spotted an old Mac Plus about to be thrown away. I lugged it back to my house, along with its nostalgic mouse and keyboard, and turned it on. The screen worked, but I ran into a blinking folder with a question mark. While I know that this certainly isn't fatal, I am uncertain which OS it will run, and how I can cart it onto floppy diskettes.



I also picked up a generic-looking beige box by "Total Peripherals". I haven't tried starting the computer up with the box plugged in. Does it contain the hard drive? What is it exactly?



Thanks for any help at all. I've become nostalgic for an era predating my own birth, and I'd love to have this memento of Mac obsession up and running.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 24
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Maybe it contains the hard drive that the mac plus is trying to boot from... try plugging it in and see what happens.
  • Reply 2 of 24
    fotnsfotns Posts: 301member
    If I remember correctly, the Mac Plus did not have an internal hard drive. A hard drive was was an option that hooked up externaly through the floppy port on the back. You will need to make some boot floppies of System 6 from Apple.
  • Reply 3 of 24
    regreg Posts: 832member
    www.everymac.com has all the info you need.



    http://www.everymac.com/systems/appl.../mac_plus.html



    I checked my old OS Cd's and they only go back to 7.6. The oldest unit we still have is a TAM which is only used to look good and listen to music.



    reg
  • Reply 4 of 24
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by FotNS

    If I remember correctly, the Mac Plus did not have an internal hard drive. A hard drive was was an option that hooked up externaly through the floppy port on the back.



    I get it. That would be the HD? What else does the Total Peripheral box contain?
  • Reply 5 of 24
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Probably nothing.



    The first hard drive I ever saw was a 20MB attached to a Mac Plus that was probably 6"x8"x2". And *LOUD*.
  • Reply 6 of 24
    trumptmantrumptman Posts: 16,464member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Placebo

    I get it. That would be the HD? What else does the Total Peripheral box contain?



    The box contains a SCSI hard drive, a fan and a power supply. You need to look and insure it has termination, basically a means of telling the SCSI chain that there are no more devices to look for.



    The Mac Plus only has an 800k floppy drive. So that is something to consider when trying to use floppies with it.



    Good luck.



    Nick
  • Reply 7 of 24
    endymionendymion Posts: 375member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Placebo

    I've become nostalgic for an era predating my own birth, and I'd love to have this memento of Mac obsession up and running.



    A Mac Plus predating your birth. Way to make some of us feel old.



    So I guess if I dared mention the days of tape drives where it took 5 minutes to load a program all to the tune of modem like noise, you'd just give me that quizzical look, wouldn't ya?
  • Reply 8 of 24
    outsideroutsider Posts: 6,008member
    You can run System 3 all the way up to System 7.5.5. Support for the Plus ended at MacOS 7.6. I would suggest System 7.1. It's a nice OS, especially if you can find a copy of ClarisWorks 4!
  • Reply 9 of 24
    nguyenhm16nguyenhm16 Posts: 203member
    If you can't get it working, you can always turn it into a MacQuarium.
  • Reply 10 of 24
    regreg Posts: 832member
    Here's a good link that might help you decide what you might need for the plus.



    reg
  • Reply 11 of 24
    voxappsvoxapps Posts: 236member
    If your Plus boots to the flashing question mark, it's good news 'cause it means the expensive stuff (power supply, analog board, monitor) still works. If the external hard drive functions, it probably has the OS loaded on it and you won't need to find an OS on floppies.



    If the external HD is dead, you might look on eBay for an external 800K SCSI floppy drive which will allow you to boot from a floppy and have an open floppy bay for application diskettes or for storing data. With only one diskette drive, the swapping of the application diskette with the OS diskette with the data diskette is highly amusing...for about the first five minutes.



    Also, the Plus has no fan, so never put anything on top of it or close enough to the sides to block the air intakes.



    Now you need to find some appropriate vintage software: WriteNow, MacDraw and MacPaint, More, Excel 1.0, PageMaker or Ready, Set, Go!, Aldus Persuasion, and -of course- Dark Castle.
  • Reply 12 of 24
    yevgenyyevgeny Posts: 1,148member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Endymion

    So I guess if I dared mention the days of tape drives where it took 5 minutes to load a program all to the tune of modem like noise, you'd just give me that quizzical look, wouldn't ya?



    Those were the good days. Back when a floppy drive was a profound upgrade. I think that I will break my Vic20 out of the attic and write some basic programs for it.
  • Reply 13 of 24
    yevgenyyevgeny Posts: 1,148member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Voxapps

    With only one diskette drive, the swapping of the application diskette with the OS diskette with the data diskette is highly amusing...for about the first five minutes.





    ...and -of course- Dark Castle.



    Swapping floppy disks was known as doing the floppy disk tango.



    Dark Castle is an absolute must. That was probably the most innovative of its day.
  • Reply 14 of 24
    endymionendymion Posts: 375member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Yevgeny

    Those were the good days. Back when a floppy drive was a profound upgrade.



    ...and a hole punch would double your disk space. I remember getting an external 5.25 floppy drive for $200+.... and people complain about the price of hard drives today....



    Quote:

    I think that I will break my Vic20 out of the attic and write some basic programs for it.



    I did my stuff on a trusty ole' Atari 800XL
  • Reply 15 of 24
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Outsider

    It's a nice OS, especially if you can find a copy of ClarisWorks 4!



    Care for version 3? Gosh I feel old, but I used to use that on my G3. (Before I bought Appleworks last November.) I also have MS Word 5.1. I'm not 100% sure if it will work with your system but it is rock-solid.8)
  • Reply 16 of 24
    crazychestercrazychester Posts: 1,339member
    I've got CW 4 plus the discs for a version of OS 7.? somewhere, Hypercard 7, MS Word 5.?, Quicken 5.0. All manner of old crap if you want it.
  • Reply 17 of 24
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by crazychester

    Hypercard 7



    Oh, man. Don't get me started about HyperCard!



    That's Apple's "other Newton". Man, what a lost treasure...
  • Reply 18 of 24
    silentechoessilentechoes Posts: 288member
    I used to play dark castle on my Amiga. Oh man what a great game that was.
  • Reply 19 of 24
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Endymion

    ...and a hole punch would double your disk space.







    LOL!!! Holy crap, I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THAT!!!



    I was a kid when I got my C64 and had so many 5 1/4 disks laying around and copies upon copies of games.



    I remember going to Crazy Eddies (gotta be from NYC to know that one) for cheap games. I still have harrowing nightmares of the fact that the cover illustrations of the games were simply awesome (gotta love that 80s art) and the games were usually absolute crap.



    There was a game... 1492 and the conquest or something... damn... what the hell was it called. You had to explore the "New world" and either trade or conquer with the locals. Never finished it unfortunately.



    Also a copter game... Firefox? oh oh! And Impossible Mission... it was... impossible.





    Sorry, went a bit off track.



    so, yeah, back to hole-punching the disks... and then putting the silver stickers on them to "lock" them.



    Thats just hilarious...





    ps... is there a LOGO emulator enywhere? I have a craving for making silly patterns all of a sudden...



    FW 30, RT 60, FW 120...
  • Reply 20 of 24
    vox barbaravox barbara Posts: 2,021member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by reg

    Here's a good link that might help you decide what you might need for the plus.



    reg



    missing link anyway?
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