Last month, I was browsing the Free/Cheap Marketplace (as I so often do, looking for Bus Stuff™) when I came across an ad for untested—possibly non-working vintage compact Macintosh computers for an extremely reasonable price. Now, I’ve been a Mac user for as long as I’ve been around computers, cutting my graphic design teeth on a Macintosh SE in my high school‘s Design & Print lab and the Newspaper office. I designed (and printed) flyers for the drama club’s productions in Ready, Set, Go!, made some screen-printed apparel in Aldus Freehand, and drew my first digital mini-comic in MacPaint, printed out on an ImageWriter. I even had a few SimCities saved to floppy disks along with my Midi compositions. These specific Mac All-in-Ones have a particular nostalgia for me, and I know how useful they can be.

Later, when I moved to Chicago to pursue a career in either acting or comics, I ended up further developing my desktop publishing skills on (i think?) a Power Macintosh 7100, running a full Adobe (RIP, Aldus…) suite to design business cards, flyers, presentation materials, and postcards at a small copy shop. At the same time I was using my girlfriend’s Quadra (maybe?) to layout my comics and design catalogs, create desktop themes and icon sets, and begin to learn different kinds of programming with Hypercard and FileMaker.

Since then, I’ve owned various Macs of my own, starting with the original Motorola StarMax 3000 clone, a G4 tower, then a G5 tower, a flat-panel iMac, a white iBook, a couple MacBook Pros, and a Mac Mini I currently use as my media and print server. I even had a Newton eMate 300 for a while, but struggled to find a real use for it in my day-to-day.

Anyway, back to the ad for non-working Compact Macs. So, at one point I found a blog post of a project to take empty Mac Classic shells and turn them into bookshelf speakers, and have always had the thought in my head to do this myself one day. I’ve kept a lookout for empty shells since then (and even had a couple for a while before giving up on the idea of this project temporarily), but they’re hard to find cheap and in good condition. I think the pair I used to have I paid $10 each for, and haven’t seen any available in the years since. So when I spotted this ad for untested Mac SEs and Pluses for $20 each, I figured what the hell? and made plans to pick a few up just for the cases.

I contacted the seller and made arrangements to come take a look. I made the 1+hour drive down south of Salem and he showed me into his garage, where he had maybe a dozen vintage arcade and pinball machines set up and running. Turns out refurbishing electronics is a hobby, and vintage macs are just a nostalgia thing for him, same as me. Over the years he’d amassed a collection of probably 30 or 40 different Macintosh computers, and fixed up a bunch of them, but now he just wanted the space back and so was letting them go. He still had six compact Macs to show me, and even offered to give them a quick power-up test to see if they happened to run. Surprisingly, not only did they all start up to a “?” System screen, most of the floppy drives were still in decent operating order.

I decided that I couldn’t just take these for the shells. These were still decent computers with probably a lot of life left to them. Certainly there was still a lot they could do with the old software. I started picking out the three or four I thought I wanted to take, and then the seller offered me half-off, I think just to get rid of them. So yeah, I ended up taking all six of them. I couldn’t resist.

So now what?

Well, for starters, I don’t think I’m going to get any bookshelf speakers out of these. They all run pretty well, and with some cleaning and modernization they would make great little collector machines. I just can’t bring myself to butcher these perfectly functional computers just for the shell.

When my daughter was two, I found a Mac SE at a yard sale and used it to introduce her to computers, drawing, and typing, so I know these machines can still have some great use. I’d love to fire up a lot of the old software again—make some HyperCard stacks, play some ShufflePuck and Lode Runner. So I’m planning to keep one of the SEs for myself at least. The rest of them, I’m going to get in and dust them out, clean the motherboards and make sure that none of the capacitors are leaking. The floppy drives could all use a good deep clean and re-greasing. I’ll upgrade the RAM to max them all out, and replace the PRAM batteries. I need to get some system disks so I can get them all booted up, and then I’ll plan to sell them all. I don’t have keyboards or mice for them, so I’ll be selling them cheap I think.

I’d love to install some modern hard-drive equivalent like a BlueSCSI or PiSCSI into them, pre-loaded with a ton of old software, but I’m not sure the cost or effort would be worth it to a potential buyer. Who knows, I could make the offer at least I guess?

I’m definitely working on assembling a PiSCSI for myself to use, and am planning to make a bunch of other unreasonable mods to MY SE, like replacing the internal floppy drives with higher-capacity Zip or Jaz drives, and a DVD-ROM drive! I also have a pie-in-the-sky idea of making a silicone mold of the two-piece plastic shell and casting a new one in translucent resin, but that’s down the road a ways. Taking a lot of inspiration from the Action Retro Youtube channel’s “Cursed SE” here.

I’m also thinking about indulging my nostalgia further by picking up even MORE vintage Mac computers, reacquiring a couple that I used to have like the G4 graphite tower and the snow white iBook, and a couple that I never had like the famous ‘lampshade’ iMac G4. I already have a lead on one of those, and I’m hoping to pick it up in the next couple weeks. I understand it doesn’t power up, so I’m anticipating some troubleshooting and cleaning ahead of me to get it running again.

But yeah! I’m excited about this. I’ve been learning a lot about these old machines specifically, but also about refurbishing and repairing old electronics. The project has inspired me to start helping friends and neighbors keep their older computers running, and researching ways to keep using these old guys and how to help keep them integrated with the modern computing ecosystem. I’ll keep posting updates on this project and others down the road. Who knows, I might even start my own video series about all these repairs.