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Macintosh 128K

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Back case of an unaltered still working original Macintosh (Sold from January 1984 to September 1984).
Logic Board serial # 5123 one of the original Macintosh models(of 6000) sold in the dealerships on introduction in January 1984


The Macintosh 128K was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Introduced in January 1984 at the price of $2495 US, it had a beige case and was fully self-contained. An indentation in the top of the case allowed the computer to be lifted and carried. The name Macintosh 128K is a retronym coined to differentiate it from newer models. The original name was simply Macintosh.

The 128K was not expandable, as it was intended as a stand-alone "appliance", to be purchased in the same way that people purchase refrigerators or vacuum cleaners. Its 128 kilobytes of memory initially seemed large compared to the 64 kB available in some other desktop computers of the time. It had ports for the mouse, a printer (ImageWriter or, later, the LaserWriter), a modem, an external floppy drive, and a monophonic speaker. This was an advantage over edge connector expansion card technology, common on earlier home computers, which were relatively fragile and foreign to most home users; with the new connector ports, an amateur user could easily connect a device without opening the computer.

The Macintosh contained a 400 kB, single-sided floppy disk drive and had no internal hard drive or other internal mechanical storage. At the time, one floppy disk was sufficient to store the System Software, the application you wanted to use at the time and the data files created with the applications. Indeed, the 400 kB drive capacity was large compared to the basic 160-180 kB floppy drives in other computers at the time. However, most users write-protected their System/Application disks and found themselves swapping the system and data diskettes interminably. The Macintosh External Disk Drive (also a single-sided 400 kB floppy), was a popular add-on at $495.

The 128K had a crisp one-bit monochrome, 9-inch display with a resolution of 512x342 pixels, establishing the desktop publishing standard of 72 PPI. The keyboard had no arrow keys or numeric keypad — although later you could purchase a numeric keypad separately — and the mouse had only a single button, a signature of Apple's mice that would continue until the introduction of the Apple Mighty Mouse in 2005.

The unit did not include a fan, making it extremely quiet while in operation. Steve Jobs insisted that the Macintosh ship without a fan, a marketing (not engineering) decision that persisted until the introduction of the Macintosh SE in 1987, after Jobs was forced out of Apple. This was the source of many common — and very expensive — component failures in the first four Macintosh models, so much so that Larry Pina wrote two very successful (and now highly sought-after) how-to repair manuals, The Dead Mac Scrolls and Macintosh Repair & Upgrade Secrets. The persistent overheating, and the design of the floppy disk drive, led to the nickname "The beige toaster".

The applications MacPaint and MacWrite were bundled with the Mac, other programs including MacProject, MacTerminal and Microsoft's Word and Microsoft Multiplan, eventually turning into Microsoft Excel.

Following the release of the Macintosh 512K which expanded the memory from 128 kB to 512 kB, the original Macintosh was nicknamed the 'thin Mac' and the new model the 'fat Mac'.

Credits

The Macintosh 128K was unusual in that it included the signatures of the Macintosh Division as of early 1982 molded on the inside of the case. The names were Peggy Aleixo, Colette Askeland, Bill Atkinson, Steve Balog, Bob Belleville, Mike Boich, Bill Bull, Matt Carter, Berry Cash, Debbie Coleman, George Crow, Donn Denman, Christopher Espinosa, Bill Fernandez, Martin Haeberli, Andy Hertzfeld, Joanna Hoffman, Rod Holt, Bruce Horn, Hap Horn, Brian Howard, Steven Jobs, Larry Kenyon, Patti King, Daniel Kottke, Angeline Lo, Ivan Mach, Gerald Manock, Mary Ellen McCammon, Vicki Milledge, Mike Murray, Ron Nicholson Jr, Terry Oyama, Benjamin Pang, Jef Raskin, Brian Robertson, Dave Roots, Patricia Sharp, Burrell Smith, Bryan Stearns, Lynn Takahashi, Randy Wigginton, Linda Wilkin, Woz, Pamela Wyman, Laszlo Zidek, and two others.

Trivia

  • The cheat code "DN1984" reveals an easter egg that displays an ad for the original Apple Macintosh on the movie theatre screen of level one of episode one of the Macintosh version of Duke Nukem 3D.

See also

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