lcd monitors compatible with mac iici in stock

The page is written in German language. It seems to be maintained, still, as the page moved to a new host few months ago (thanks to Uwe Draeger !). If one knows about a similar collection of well documented mac hardware hacks in English language, please post the url.

If you want to set up a monitor for old mac use, only, it is a good idea to make a cable with the appropriate connector and hard wired sense pins, as additional adaptors tend to distort the analogue video signal slightly. It is also possible to make the mac video card ignore any sense pin settings and to choose from any resolution the video card is capable of. To make this, use some control panel like "Activate all resolutions". In case you did so, consider to make a sense pin wiring for a basic resolution of 640 x 480 at 66.7 Hz to support almost any mac w/o specific software settings.

A vintage Apple monitor isn"t just a blast from the past to add to your Mac collection, but it can also be used for retro computing. Apple has been producing computer monitors since 1976 in varying sizes and capabilities. If you plan on using a vintage Apple monitor, then you should first learn about the display capabilities and required connections to ensure proper functioning of your iMac.

Apple first started producing monochrome monitors and then eventually moved onto cathode ray tube (CRT) and liquid crystal display (LCD) options. Apple nicknamed monochrome monitors "Green Screens" due to the bright green text color on their screens. These original devices were bulky and lacked color capabilities in their resolutions, making them fade out of popularity towards the 1980"s. CRT displays are also heavy, but they offered more colors and a higher-quality display. Apple used these monitors until the late 1990"s when LCD monitors took over the market.

LCD technology uses a flat panel screen, rather than the bulky screens of CTR standards. Today LCD monitors are the standard screen for laptops and desktops almost exclusively, and they began to outsell CTRs by 2004.

The earliest monitors were very small. Most monitors only measured 13-14 inches. However, in the 1990"s and early 2000"s, larger LCD monitor sizes became more popular. Monitor sizes up to 30 inches are common, but the most-used option is the 27-inch display. This size creates a resolution that is suitable for daily Mac use as well as gaming and entertainment purposes.

Apple Macbooks and iMac models are designed with portability and ease of use in mind. Mac never produced a model over 17 inches as a result. Most displays found in Apple Macbook products utilize Retina technology, which is a type of LED format that offers higher pixel density. The most common Mac sizes include the following:

Please note that RAM modules must be present (at least) in bank A if you connect a monitor to the built-in video port on a Macintosh IIci. The article http://lowendmac.com/ram/iici.shtml should provide you with additional information about rules concerning RAM.

Building on the success of the Mac IIcx, the IIci offers 56% more power in the same compact case. A new feature was integrated video. The big advantage: Users no longer needed to buy a separate video card. The big disadvantage: The built-in video uses system memory (this is sometimes called “vampire video”).

Built-in video replaces the Macintosh II High Resolution Video Card (25 MHz motherboard video vs. a 10 MHz NuBus connection) and supports 8-bit color on a 640 x 480 screen as well as 4-bits on a 640 x 870 Portrait Display. Depending on bit depth, this uses between 32 KB and 320 KB of system memory. Also, Byte reports (Oct. 1989) that because the CPU and video share the same memory, the CPU is shut out of accessing RAM during video refresh, reducing performance by up to 8%.

Our own tests on a IIci show that although CPU performance does increase slightly when using a NuBus video card, video performance with an unaccelerated video card is about half as fast as the built-in video. Unless you need to support a larger screen or have an accelerated video card, overall performance may be worse with a video card than with internal video.

The Mac II, IIx, and IIcx all run a 16 MHz CPU on a 16 MHz motherboard with a separate 10 MHz bus for NuBus cards. Byte mentions (Oct. 1989) that the IIci runs its CPU and RAM at 25 MHz, NuBus at 10 MHz, I/O subsystems with a third oscillator, and onboard video with a fourth oscillator. By decoupling various subsystems this way, it was easier for Apple to boost the CPU and RAM speed without redesigning every part of the motherboard.

The IIci was the first Mac to support the 68030’s burst access mode, which “allows the CPU to read 16 bytes of data at a time in about half the clock cycles. This results in [a] . . . 10 percent improvement in performance.” (Byte, Oct. 1989, p. 102)

The IIci was the first Mac with “clean” ROMs, allowing 32-bit operation without special software. Along with the Mac Portable, it was the first Mac to use surface mount technology.

If you’re running low on RAM, by all means buy more. You should have at least 8 MB, but more is much better (unless you’re sticking with System 6, in which case you can’t use more than 8 MB).

Quadra 700 motherboards are uncommon. For that level of performance, consider a 68040-based accelerator, such as the Sonnet Presto 040 (40 MHz 68040 with 128 KB L2 cache, see our benchmark page). See a more complete list of accelerators below. Note that you will have to perform surgery on your case with the Quadra 700 motherboard upgrade.

A newer hard drive will be far more responsive and have far more capacity than the one that shipped with the computer. Any 3.5″ half-height or third-height drive will fit.

Discontinued accelerators (68030 unless otherwise noted) include the Applied Engineering TransWarp (50 MHz 68030, 25, 33 MHz 68040), DayStar Universal PowerCache (33, 40, 50 MHz), Fusion Data TokaMac SX (25 MHz 68040), Logica LogiCache (50 MHz), Radius Rocket (25 MHz 68LC040 to 40 MHz 68040), TechWorks NuBus (33 MHz 68040), and Total Systems Magellan (25 MHz 68040).

Moving Files from Your New Mac to Your Vintage Mac, Paul Brierley, The ‘Book Beat, 2006.06.13. Old Macs use floppies; new ones don’t. Old Macs use AppleTalk; Tiger doesn’t support it. New Macs can burn CDs, but old CD drives can’t always read CD-R. So how do you move the files?

Was the Macintosh IIci the Best Mac Ever?, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 2009.01.19. Introduced in 1989, the Mac IIci was fast, had integrated video, included 3 expansion slots, and could be upgraded in myriad ways.

Know Your Mac’s Upgrade Options, Phil Herlihy, The Usefulness Equation, 2008.08.26. Any Mac can be upgraded, but it’s a question of what can be upgraded – RAM, hard drive, video, CPU – and how far it can be upgraded.

Creating Classic Mac Boot Floppies in OS X, Paul Brierley, The ‘Book Beat, 2008.08.07. Yes, it is possible to create a boot floppy for the Classic Mac OS using an OS X Mac that doesn’t have Classic. Here’s how.

The Compressed Air Keyboard Repair, Charles W Moore, Miscellaneous Ramblings, 2008.07.24. If your keyboard isn’t working as well as it once did, blasting under the keys with compressed air may be the cure.

A Vintage Mac Network Can Be as Useful as a Modern One, Carl Nygren, My Turn, 2008.04.08. Old Macs can exchange data and share an Internet connection very nicely using Apple’s old LocalTalk networking.

Vintage Mac Networking and File Exchange, Adam Rosen, Adam’s Apple, 2007.12.19. How to network vintage Macs with modern Macs and tips on exchanging files using floppies, Zip disks, and other media.

Vintage Mac Video and Monitor Mania, Adam Rosen, Adam’s Apple, 2007.12.17. Vintage Macs and monitors didn’t use VGA connectors. Tips on making modern monitors work with old Macs.

Getting Inside Vintage Macs and Swapping Out Bad Parts, Adam Rosen, Adam’s Apple, 2007.12.14. When an old Mac dies, the best source of parts is usually another dead Mac with different failed parts.

Solving Mac Startup Problems, Adam Rosen, Adam’s Apple, 2007.12.12. When your old Mac won’t boot, the most likely culprits are a dead PRAM battery or a failed (or failing) hard drive.

20 year old Mac IIci dies, Mozilla for Classic Mac OS, USB 3 on Mac this year?, and more, Mac News Review, 2009.07.10. Also picking a Mac over a PC, which Macs can boot from SD?, GrandReporter automates searching the Web, an online image editor, and more.

The 25 most important Macs (part 2), Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 2009.02.17. The 25 most significant Macs in the first 25 years of the platform, continued.

Golden Apples: The 25 best Macs to date, Michelle Klein-Häss, Geek Speak, 2009.01.27. The best Macs from 1984 through 2009, including a couple that aren’t technically Macs.

Why You Should Partition Your Mac’s Hard Drive, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 2008.12.11. “At the very least, it makes sense to have a second partition with a bootable version of the Mac OS, so if you have problems with your work partition, you can boot from the ’emergency’ partition to run Disk Utility and other diagnostics.”

Better and Safer Surfing with Internet Explorer and the Classic Mac OS, Max Wallgren, Mac Daniel, 2007.11.06. Tips on which browsers work best with different Mac OS versions plus extra software to clean cookies and caches, detect viruses, handle downloads, etc.

Simple Macs for Simple Tasks, Tommy Thomas, Welcome to Macintosh, 2007.10.19. Long live 680×0 Macs and the classic Mac OS. For simple tasks such as writing, they can provide a great, low distraction environment.

Interchangeabilty and Compatibility of Apple 1.4 MB Floppy SuperDrives, Sonic Purity, Mac Daniel, 2007.09.26. Apple used two kinds of high-density floppy drives on Macs, auto-inject and manual inject. Can they be swapped?

Macintosh IIx: Apple’s flagship gains a better CPU, FPU, and floppy drive, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 2007.09.19. 20 years ago Apple improved the Mac II by using a Motorola 68030 CPU with the new 68882 FPU. And to top it off, the IIx was the first Mac that could read DOS disks with its internal drive.

Vintage Macs provide a less distracting writing environment, Brian Richards, Advantage Mac, 2007.09.18. A Mac OS X user finds an old Macintosh IIsi and discovers the joy of writing undisturbed by music, messaging, and streaming content.

No junk from Apple, Mac mouse dies after 18 years, time to cut the gigabyte BS, and more, Mac News Review, 2007.08.10. Also new iMac and Mac mini models, Apple’s aluminum keyboards, new NAS drive looks like a Mac mini, first software update for aluminum iMacs, and more.

Mac System 7.5.5 Can Do Anything Mac OS 7.6.1 Can, Tyler Sable, Classic Restorations, 2007.06.04. Yes, it is possible to run Internet Explorer 5.1.7 and SoundJam with System 7.5.5. You just need to have all the updates – and make one modification for SoundJam.

Appearance Manager Allows Internet Explorer 5.1.7 to Work with Mac OS 7.6.1, Max Wallgren, Mac Daniel, 2007.05.23. Want a fairly modern browser with an old, fast operating system? Mac OS 7.6.1 plus the Appearance Manager and Internet Explorer may be just what you want.

Format Any Drive for Older Macs with Patched Apple Tools, Tyler Sable, Classic Restorations, 2007.04.25. Apple HD SC Setup and Drive Setup only work with Apple branded hard drives – until you apply the patches linked to this article.

Making floppies and CDs for older Macs using modern Macs, Windows, and Linux PCs, Tyler Sable, Classic Restorations, 2007.03.15. Older Macs use HFS floppies and CDs. Here are the free resources you’ll need to write floppies or CDs for vintage Macs using your modern computer.

System 7 Today, advocates of Apple’s ‘orphan’ Mac OS 7.6.1, Tommy Thomas, Welcome to Macintosh, 2006.10.26. Why Mac OS 7.6.1 is far better for 68040 and PowerPC Macs than System 7.5.x.

The legendary Apple Extended Keyboard, Tommy Thomas, Welcome to Macintosh, 2006.10.13. Introduced in 1987, this extended keyboard was well designed and very solidly built. It remains a favorite of long-time Mac users.

30 days of old school computing: No real hardships, Ted Hodges, Vintage Mac Living, 2006.10.11. These old black-and-white Macs are just fine for messaging, word processing, spreadsheets, scheduling, contact management, and browsing the Web.

Jag’s House, where older Macs still rock, Tommy Thomas, Welcome to Macintosh, 2006.09.25. Over a decade old, Jag’s House is the oldest Mac website supporting classic Macs and remains a great resource for vintage Mac users.

Mac OS 8 and 8.1: Maximum Size, Maximum Convenience, Tyler Sable, Classic Restorations, 2006.09.11. Mac OS 8 and 8.1 add some useful new features and tools, and it can even be practical on 68030-based Macs.

Vintage Macs with System 6 run circles around 3 GHz Windows 2000 PC, Tyler Sable, Classic Restorations, 2006.07.06. Which grows faster, hardware speed or software bloat? These benchmarks show vintage Macs let you be productive much more quickly than modern Windows PCs.

Floppy drive observations: A compleat guide to Mac floppy drives and disk formats, Scott Baret, Online Tech Journal, 2006.06.29. A history of the Mac floppy from the 400K drive in the Mac 128K through the manual-inject 1.4M SuperDrives used in the late 1990s.

System 7.6.1 is perfect for many older Macs, John Martorana, That Old Mac Magic, 2006.03.24. Want the best speed from your old Mac? System 7.6.1 can give you that with a fairly small memory footprint – also helpful on older Macs.

System 7.5 and Mac OS 7.6: The beginning and end of an era, Tyler Sable, Classic Restorations, 2006.02.15. System 7.5 and Mac OS 7.6 introduced many new features and greater modernity while staying within reach of most early Macintosh models.

Turning an LC or other ancient Mac into a webcam with a QuickCam, Tyler Sable, Classic Restorations, 2006.01.25. As long as it has 4 MB of RAM and a hard drive, any 16 MHz or faster Mac that supports color can be configured as a webcam.

System 7: Bigger, better, more expandable, and a bit slower than System 6, Tyler Sable, Classic Restorations, 2006.01.04. The early versions of System 7 provide broader capability for modern tasks than System 6 while still being practical for even the lowliest Macs.

Web browser tips for the classic Mac OS, Nathan Thompson, Embracing Obsolescence, 2006.01.03. Tips on getting the most out of WaMCom, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, iCab, Opera, and WannaBe using the classic Mac OS.

Which system software is best for my vintage Mac?, Tyler Sable, Classic Restorations, 2005.11.22. Which system software works best depends to a great extent on just which Mac you have and how much RAM is installed.

The legendary DayStar Turbo 040 hot rods 68030 Macs, Tyler Sable, Classic Restorations, 2005.11.29. DayStar’s vintage upgrade can make an SE/30 and most models in the Mac II series faster than the ‘wicked fast’ Mac IIfx.

Never connect an Apple II 5.25″ floppy drive to the Mac’s floppy port. Doing so can ruin the floppy controller, meaning you can’t even use the internal drive any longer.

Internal video on the IIci and IIsi, and the Mac II mono and color video cards, will not work with multisync monitors, whether Apple or PC style. Griffin Technology made the Mac 2 Series Adapter, which works with Apple’s Multiple Scan monitors and most Mac compatible monitors. There was also a version for using VGA-type monitors on older Macs.

Serial port normally restricted to 57.6 kbps; throughput with a 56k modem may be limited. See 56k modem page. For more information on Mac serial ports, read Macintosh Serial Throughput in our Online Tech Journal.

Sometime between 2003 and 2006 I found this Apple Macintosh Quadra 700 at the old State Road Goodwill in Cuyahoga Falls.  According to this Macintosh serial decoding site my Quadra (serial # F114628QC82) was the 7012th Mac built in the 14th week of 1991 in Apple’s Fremont, California factory.

After I started this blog I dragged over most of the vintage Mac stuff out of my parents’ attic to my apartment.   I decided that the Quadra 700 should get a semi-permanent place on my vintage computing desk.   The desk (which you’ve probably seen in the Macintosh SE and PowerBook G3 entries) has a credenza that limits how deep of a monitor I can use.   The Multiple Scan 17 doesn’t leave enough space for the keyboard and really restricts what else I can have on the desk.

Originally my plan was to use the Quadra with an HP 1740 LCD monitor I picked up at the Kent-Ravena Goodwill so I bought a DB-15 to HD-15 (VGA) converter.

However, while digging through the Mac stuff in my parents’ attic I made an interesting discovery.  Unbeknownst to me I owned AppleColor High-Resolution RGB 13″ monitor.

When I was still living with my parents there wasn’t really a lot of room in my bedroom for all of the vintage computing stuff I had accumulated.  Often, I would lose interest in something and it would go into the attic.

At some point my Dad must have brought home this monitor from a thrift store.  Unlike most CRT monitors where the monitor cable is attached to the monitor this one has a detachable cable which was lost when he bought it (I have since purchased a replacement on eBay).  With all of the Mac stuff put away and no monitor cable to test it with, it joined everything else in the attic and I forgot about it.

Years later when I stumbled upon it deep in the shadows of a poorly lit part of the room, I thought it was the cheaper Macintosh 12″ RGB monitor that went with the LC series.  But then, I saw the name plate on the back.

This was an amazing stroke of luck because that’s a damn fine monitor.  Back in the late 80s this was one of Apple’s high end Trinitron monitors.  Remember those Apple brochures my mother got in West Akron in 1989 from the Macintosh SE entry?

Apple also sold a rather attractive optional base for the AppleColor RGB monitor with great Snow White detailing, as seen in this drawing from Technical Introduction to the Macintosh Family: Second Edition.

Oddly enough, when I ventured further into my parent’s attic I found a box of Macintosh stuff that a college roommate had recovered from being trashed at a college graphics lab that contained, among other things, the manual for this model of monitor.

The Quadra 700 is one of my all-time favorite thrift store finds.  It was the first extremely serious Macintosh I have owned from the expandable 680X0 era (roughly from 1987 to 1994 when Apple moved to PowerPC CPUs). Previously the most powerful Mac I had found was a Macintosh LC III with a color monitor. That machine introduced me to what the experience of using a color Macintosh had been like in the early 1990s but the Quadra was on another level entirely.

To put this in perspective: Macintosh LC III was a lower-end machine from 1993 that gave you something like the performance of a high-end Macintosh from 1989. The Quadra 700 (along with the Quadra 900 which was basically the same guts in a larger, more expandable case) was Apple’s late 1991 high-end machine. When it was new, the Quadra 700 cost a staggering $5700, without a monitor. The monitor could easily add another $1500.

Apple created a lot of machines in the Macintosh II series and it’s a bit difficult to keep track of them.  As you can see in the brochure, the original machine was the Macintosh II, built around Motorola’s 68020 processor and for the first time in the Macintosh, a fully 32-bit bus.  That machine was succeeded the following year by the Macintosh IIx, which, like all following Macintosh II models used the 68030 processor.  The II and the IIx both had six NuBus expansion slots, which is why their cases are so wide.

If you’re more familiar with the history of Intel processors don’t let the similar numbering schemes lead you into thinking the 68020 was equivalent to a 286 and the 68030 was equivalent to a 386.  In reality the original Macintosh’s 68000 CPU would be more comparable to the 286 while the 68020 and 68030 were comparable to the 386.  In the numbering scheme that Motorola was using at the time processors with even numbered digits in their second to last number like the 68000, 68020 and 68040 were new designs and processors with odd numbers like 68010 and 68030 were enhancements to the previous model.  The 68030 gained a memory mapping unit (MMU) which enabled virtual memory.  The jump from the 286 to the 386 was much greater than the jump from the 68020 to the 68030.

The next machine in the series was the Macintosh IIcx in 1989, which basically took the guts of the IIx and put them in a smaller case with only three expansion slots (hence, it’s a II-compact-x).  Like the II and the IIx, the IIcx had no on-board video and required a video card to be in one of the expansion slots.

The case used in the Macintosh IIcx and IIci was designed to match in color, styling, and size the AppleColor High Resolution RGB monitor I have, as seen in this illustration from Technical Introduction to the Macintosh Family: Second Edition.

As you probably caught onto by now the Quadra 700 uses the same case as the Macintosh IIci but with the Snow White detail lines and the Apple badge turned 90 degrees, turning it into a mini-tower.  That’s why the monitor matches the Quadra so well.

The last Macintosh to use the full-sized six-slot Macintosh II case was the uber-expensive Macintosh IIfx in 1990.  It used a blistering 40MHz 68030 and started at $8970.

However, if you bought a IIfx, you may have felt very silly the next year when the Quadra series based on the new 68040 processor came out and succeeded the Macintosh II series.

According to these benchmarks at Low End Mac, the 25MHz 68040 in the Quadra 700 scores 33% higher than the Macintosh IIfx’s 40MHz 68030 on an integer benchmark and five times as fast on a math benchmark.  Plus, it was just over half the price of the IIfx.

The interior of the Quadra 700 is extremely tidy. The question the hardware designers at Apple were clearly working with was: what is the most efficient case layout if you need to pack a power supply, a hard disk, 3.5″ floppy drive, and 2 full-length expansion slots in a case? In the Quadra 700 the two drives are at the front of the right side of the case, the PSU is at the back of the right side, and the two expansion slots take up the left side of the case.

You can tell how the arrival of CD-ROM drives threw a wrench in all of this serene order.  You’re never going to shoe-horn a 5.25″ optical drive in this case.  And when you do get a CD drive in the case you’re going to have an ugly looking gap for the drive door rather than just the understated slot for the floppy.  I think Apple’s designs lost a lot of their minimalist beauty when they started putting CD drives in Macintoshes soon after the Quadra 700.

Inside the case, the way everything is attached without screws is very impressive.  The sides of the case and the cage that hold the drives forms a channel that the PSU slides into. Assuming nothing is stuck you should be able to pull out the PSU, detach the drive cables, and then pull out the drive cage in a few short minutes without using a screwdriver (actually, there’s supposed to be a screw securing the drive cage to the logic board but it was missing in mine with no ill effects).

We tend to think of plastic in the pejorative.  But, plastic is only cheap and flimsy when it’s badly done.  This Quadra’s case is plastic done really, really well.  It doesn’t flex or bend.  It’s rock solid.  But, when you pick the machine up it’s much lighter than you expect it to be.

Second, notice the six empty RAM slots.  Curiously enough, on the Quadra 700 the shorter memory slots just above the battery are the main RAM.  I believe this machine has four 4MB SIMMs in addition to 4MB RAM soldered onto the logic board (the neat horizontal row of chips labeled DRAM to the left of the SIMMs on the bottom of the picture)   The larger white empty slots are for VRAM expansion.

The way the video hardware talks to the CPU makes it really, really fast compared to previous Macintoshes with built-in video and even expensive video cards for the Macintosh II series.

The Quadra’s video hardware supports a wide variety of common resolutions and refresh rates including VGA’s 640×480 and SVGA’s 800×600.  That’s why I can use the Quadra with that VGA adapter pictured above.  This was neat stuff in an era when Macintoshes tended to be very proprietary.

Imagine a time when computing was quickly becoming mainstream; computers with graphical user interfaces were becoming the norm, and expensive Macs were not doing entirely well in the market. Early Windows-based computers were obtrusive, buggy, and required more time setting IRQs and swapping hard drive ribbon cables than they offered uninterrupted uptime.

After growing up with a three or four of computers thrown together with scrap parts and running whatever operating systems I could pull together from a friend or my Dad’s office, I was longing for a computer on which I could simply work, play, and have some fun. I had enjoyed the feeling of touching the components of the computer that made sensible words and graphics appear on the screen, but I often didn’t enjoy the fact that I had to do it (especially when I gave myself a nice shock one time!).

In 1992, my Dad helped me buy a Mac; our family had a Mac Plus for a time, and I had learned to love early black and white games like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and classics like Spectre or Armor Alley.

I quickly dove into the case, and realized what an immense pleasure it was to operate inside the IIci; getting to the orderly insides took only a click and a pop of two little latches on the back of the top panel. Until I bought a Blue-and-White G3, I thought the IIci was the hardware-hacker’s ideal Mac.

I booted up the Mac and installed Mac OS 7.5.3 over our in-house AppleTalk network (this definitely beat swapping out 19 floppy disks, though the transfer rate was still abysmal—about 200kbps). I started finding any shareware floppies my Dad or brother had (my brother had some cutting-edge games like Pathways Into Darkness or Out of this World and the classic Dark Castle), and loading them on the (then) roomy 80 MB SCSI hard drive.

I really appreciated the integration of the Mac OS and the hardware of the IIci; when I decided to upgrade the RAM to 8 MB (from the original 2 MB), the Mac booted and was happy, and ran Photoshop LE 2.5.1 better than ever. When I installed a NuBus 10baseT network card (so I could use my Dad’s newly-installed network to access his ISDN connection to the Internet), I didn’t have to think about IRQ settings, the slot into which I installed the card, etc. In fact, I’d never spent more than a minute or two installing any of the upgrades I eventually put in my IIci:

I used this Mac IIci for over three years, making it the Mac I’ve used and owned the longest. I loved the simple, minimalist design so much that I decided to strip the innards and set the Mac on my dresser in lieu of other art objects until I left my parents’ house for College.

This Mac helped teach me all the paradigms of the Mac OS graphical environment (in comparison to MS DOS’s command line, and Windows 3.x and 95/98), and taught me that there was more to computing than flicking tiny switches on daughter cards, swapping out drive cables, and replacing bad CD-ROM drives (a common occurrence on the cheap PCs I was used to building). I likely spent a hundred hours simply memorizing every system setting, experimenting with the speed of a RAM disk, and playing with Photoshop, Glider Pro, Claris Works, etc.

I built my first website on this Mac IIci; it was little more than one page with a few facts about my life and family and some of my favorite pictures (scanned in with a Microtek SCSI scanner which took about 5 minutes per scan). I used Claris Home Page, but tweaked the HTML output by hand in SimpleText. I hosted the website on a Whistle InterJet that my Dad had running on a public IP address at his office.

Now that I’m a full-time web developer working in 5+ programming languages, I appreciate the simple setup I used to learn the basics of the web: HTML, JavaScript, and the HTTP protocol, all through plain text editing in SimpleText on a Mac. I truly believe that using a simple Mac helped me to focus more on the content and design of my work, even when working on parts of my projects that would rarely be seen by users. Though Steve Jobs wasn’t at Apple when the IIci was built, I think his design principles were still having a positive influence on the hardware designs coming out of Cupertino.

I wish I still had a IIci around, simply so I could pull all the parts off again and put it back together—there was something therapeutic about being able to strip an entire computer down to it’s casing (revealing signatures of the computer’s design team) and put it back together in less than 5 minutes. I credit a lot of my fundamental computer architecture understanding to the fact that I could pick apart every component of the computer—down to the CPU itself—and view the pins and jumper switches that controlled certain settings that affected how the software on the computer would run.

Looking back on the IIci and another favorite, the PowerBook 180c (a laptop with tricky Torx screws which I could field strip in less than 20 minutes), I remember with great nostalgia the times when computer hardware could be replaced on the chip-to-chip level, and voltmeters were as common as software tools like TechTool in checking the health and stability of one’s computer. Additionally, the lack of sites like iFixIt meant that I was learning the complex architecture of the computers in a truly DIY fashion.

I don’t miss the shocks, (though that only seemed to happen when I was working on PCs), but I do miss the hands-on experience I had while working on computers—especially Macs—as a kid. In today’s environment, software hacking seems to be the most enlightening form of computer learning, but it was not always so.

Since donating my IIci to a local school (I installed Netscape Navigator 2.0 so they could use it to access the Internet), I’ve owned a variety of desktop and laptop Macs, but I’ve never been taken in as much by any other Mac’s overall hardware design, even when I first held the impossibly-thin MacBook Air I’m using today.

You canjoin theInternet revolution with a faster, more versatilecomputerwith the 90MHz Carrera040 equipped MacintoshIIci. If you are looking to get online to surf the Net or expand yourbusiness, the 90MHz Carrera040 will help you establish your presencein the new emerging digital frontier. Accessing the Internet opens awide variety of opportunities and benefits. The kids will actuallyhave fundoing their homework for a changeby doing online research for their school reports and term papers.Find out the latest stock quotes and airline traveling informationfor you business. Check the status of an overnight package throughUPS or Federal Express home pages. This and much more are possiblewhen you access the Internet with a 90MHz Carrera040.

The 90MHz Carrera040providesthe necessaryspeedrequired to process heavy workloads ofinformation. With the high-performance andqualityof the 90MHz Carrera040 combinedwith the online world of the Net and intuitive interface of theMacintosh Operating System, you have thepowerto take advantage of the resources ofthe Internet easily and affordably.

Launched in July 1976, the same year Apple was founded out of Steve Jobs" parents" garage, the Apple-1 was the company"s first line of desktop computers. There were 200 models assembled by co-founder Steve Wozniak, and the one that sold for $905,000 was "one of the first batch of 50 machines built," Cassandra Hatton, a former director at Bonhams who oversaw the sale, tells CNBC Make It.

Corey Cohen, a computer historian who was recruited to examine the Apple-1, noted that it was in "superb overall condition" — with the motherboard having "no apparent modifications performed or removed." Most significantly, it was still working.

"As with historic books and manuscripts, the value of a vintage computer is determined by its rarity, historical importance and condition," explains Hatton, who is now a senior specialist and vice president at Sotheby"s.

In 2013, Christie"s auctioned off a Wozniak-signed Apple-1 for $387,750. And last year, it sold one that came with a built-in keyboard and the original instruction manuals for just over $470,000.

"Some sellers will tell you that their machines were signed by Jobs himself," he adds. "There are a lot of counterfeits out there, so be wary of such claims."

Although an Apple-1 could conceivably come with a Jobs-signed receipt, the Apple co-founder was not much involved with the actual building of the machines, and therefore was unlikely to have signed one, according to Dan Kottke, a computer engineer and one of Apple"s first employees.

Incidentally, the very earliest Apple II machines were built without vents, making them prone to overheating, Zufi explains. The design flaw, which was quickly corrected, makes the very few non-vented machines worth even more — potentially up to $10,000, he says.

But due to its rarity, an original Lisa with its two double-sided 5.25-inch floppy disk drives can be quite valuable. In 2017, Auction Team Breker sold one for $50,300.

"[The Lisa] is significant in being the first computer to include many of the features we still use today; overlapping windows, drag-and-drop, pull-down menus and the recycle bin," a spokesperson for the auction house told The Daily Mail. Breker estimates that only 30 to 100 of these machines still exist today.

In 2018, another Lisa 1 sold for $31,250 at a Bonhams auction. It came with the original keyboard, mouse, Apple Profile Hard Drive, Apple Dot Matrix Printer and a collection of software and manuals.

Later Lisa models in excellent condition can go for anywhere between $2,000 and $4,000, while a non-working machine — or just its internal components — can still be worth a couple hundred dollars, says Mimms.

The Macintosh 128K, which debuted in the legendary "1984" commercial that aired during Super Bowl XVII, was Apple"s very first Macintosh computer. Priced at $2,500, it featured a nine-inch black-and-white screen, two serial ports and a 3.5-inch floppy disc slot.

Although Zufi has seen some sell for more than $2,500, he estimates that "an original 1984 Mac will generally go for anywhere between $1,500 and $2,000."

But even without the actual machine, the original accessories alone can make you several hundred dollars richer. In 2002, Wired reported that an empty, well-maintained Macintosh 128K box, which featured artwork by Picasso, sold for more than $500 on eBay.

Those who still have the boxy travel bag that came with the computer can fetch $100, at the very least, according to Adam Rosen, a collector and founder of The Vintage Mac Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.

Even Macintosh models from the 1990s can be worth quite a bit. The Mac Color Classic II, for example, was released in 1993 in Canada, Asia and Europe, but never in the US — making it even harder to find today. Zufi bought one for himself for $2,000.

In 2017, MarketWatch reported that a retired business owner named Bob Kraft "received an offer of $11,000 for an unopened 2007 iPhone that came in a factory gift box from Apple with a red ribbon." Kraft, whose original asking price was $15,000, turned it down. "It was tempting," he told MarketWatch. "But I"m not in a hurry to sell it."

First, check to see if it works; a running device will be worth much more. And if it doesn"t work, don"t try to fix it yourself or send it to a repair shop. Components should only be replaced with its original parts, and experts suggest you"re better off leaving that decision to whoever ends up buying the device.

The original Macintosh was a squat, cute beige box with a little black-and-white screen and tiny keyboard. For a couple of decades, It was immortalized in the icon, designed by Susan Kare, that appeared when you turned on any Mac.

Almost nobody remembers the sequel. But there was one, a computer called the Macintosh II. It was unveiled three years after the original Mac, and it was a traditional PC in a whole lot of ways the original Mac wasn’t. Instead of a cute, compact, and closed single box, it was an enormous slab of a computer that you could open up and stick expansion cards into. You had to attach an external monitor—a color monitor, even.

(Although color support came to the Mac early in its lifespan, the Mac was very clearly a system designed for monochrome. If you used a color Mac in the late 80s or early 90s, the appearance of color anywhere tended to come as a shock. Color effects in classic Mac OS felt like they were painted over the original, black-and-white interface. Though color kept seeping in over the years, it wasn’t until the Aqua interface of Mac OS X that it felt like an essential part of the interface.)

The Mac II was huge—nearly 19 inches wide, 14.5 inches deep, and 5.5 inches high, weighing in at 24 pounds. And so, in 1989, Apple unveiled a much smaller box (shaving off seven inches of width and more than ten pounds) that still had room for internal expansion and supported external monitors. It was the Mac IIcx. In the fall of that year I started working at my college newspaper, and the paper’s IIcx was the Mac that everyone coveted. Three of us would lay out pages in Aldus PageMaker on Mac SEs outfitted with external full-page portrait displays. It was slow going, and unless you were zoomed in all the way, you couldn’t even read the text of your articles—it was just lines of gray rectangles, in order to speed up the graphics.

But the fourth editor, the lucky one who had managed to commandeer the Mac IIcx, got to navigate a two-page display powered by that magical little gray box. You could read the text without zooming in incredibly far. It was also the only Mac hooked up to our printer, so if you wanted to print your page for proofing, you had to load your PageMaker file onto a floppy disk, walk it over to the Mac IIcxNetTrek, too, sure.)

In time, we got more Mac II’s in the office. A Mac IIfx, the same enormous slab as the original Mac II, made its appearance. A curvy Mac IIsi with a color monitor arrived my senior year. But I never lost my love for that Mac IIcx design.

A few years later, I was working at MacUser, and the company was selling off excess equipment to employees at dramatic discounts. Since I switched to a PowerBook, my parents had been using my Mac SE to do the books for their business in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet I had set up for them. (It’s basically the only thing my father ever did on a computer in his entire life. He knew exactly which cells to click on and what to input there.) But something had gone wrong with the SE—it was spontaneously rebooting at random intervals, which is bad if you haven’t saved your spreadsheet.

And sitting there on the conference room table was a Mac IIci, that same adorable little boxy computer I had fallen in love with in 1989. I spent some ridiculously small sum of money on it—$50 maybe, including monitor?—and set it up for my parents. Until they sold the house, retired, and moved into a motorhome, it served them well—word processing for my mother and Excel for my father.

The IIcx/IIci design stuck around for a long time. It was so well balanced that you could stick it up on its side to save some desk space, or lay it flat and pop a small monitor on top of it. The final iteration of the design, the Quadra 700, actually displayed its name and Apple logo with the assumption that you’d use it as a tiny upright tower rather than laying it flat.

In the Power Mac era, Mac desktops devolved into larger towers or flatter “pizza box” style designs. But I’ll always consider the Mac IIcx and IIci as the pinnacle of early Mac desktop design.

The Macintosh IIci is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from September 1989 to February 1993. It is a more powerful version of the Macintosh IIcx, released earlier that year, and shares the same compact case design. With three NuBus expansion slots and a Processor Direct Slot, the IIci also improved upon the IIcx"s 16 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU and 68882 FPU, replacing them with 25 MHz versions of these chips.

The Macintosh Quadra 700 was introduced at the end of 1991 as Apple"s mainstream workstation product to replace the IIci, albeit at a significantly higher price point: by this time, Apple authorized resellers were offering entry-level IIci systems for US$4,000 or less, whereas the Quadra 700 entered the market above US$6,000. Because of this, Apple continued to sell the IIci until early 1993 when the less expensive Quadra 650 and comparably-priced Quadra 800 were introduced.

The IIci introduced several technical and architectural enhancements, some of which were important in preparing for System 7 (which was then called the Blue project) and would influence future Macintoshes, though some of them came at the cost of compatibility:

a new, 32-bit clean ROM with built-in 32-bit QuickDraw that consists of two parts: one part that is the same across all Macintoshes, and another area (called the overpatch area) that is specific to each Macintosh.

a first for a modular Macintosh — onboard graphics for an external display. This freed one of the system"s three NuBus slots. However, because the integrated graphics used the system"s RAM for its frame buffer, some users used a NuBus graphics card to reclaim the lost memory. Also, it was popular to install faster memory in the first bank of SIMM slots, as this is the bank used by the video subsystem. The onboard graphics supported up to 8-bit color at resolutions of either 640x480 or 512x384.

The IIci was one of the most popular and longest-lived Macintosh models of the 20th century. For much of its lifespan, it was the business "workhorse" of the Macintosh line.Macintosh IIfx, the IIci was the fastest Mac available.

An easter egg exists in the IIci ROM. If the system date is set to September 20, 1989 (the machine"s release date) and the ⌘ Command+⌥ Option+C+I keys are held during boot time, an image of the development team will be displayed.

Pogue, David; Schorr, Joseph (1999). "Chapter 12: From 128K to Quadra: Mac to Mac". MacWorld Mac Secrets, 5th Edition. IDG Books. pp. 469–470. ISBN 0-7645-4040-8.