Scored an LCIII for free!

[krye]

A guy at work gave me the old family Mac for free. He said the hard drive was bad. I opened it up and giggled some cables and it came back to life. Maybe the cable was just loose. Anyway, it works great. The floppy drive is sometimes hit or miss. I think maybe it just has to be cleaned.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this thing, but it's a cool little piece of vintage Mac history. I brought it to work and set it up in my cube as somewhat of a conversional piece. Looks nice with the fish tank screensaver.

He gave me all the original disks, manuals, and a printer. He even threw in a SCSI CDROM. It's nice to see OS 7 in action again. Pretty cool huh?

 

[soberbrain]

Nice! Congrats.

Every now and then, I search eBay and Craigslist for Color Classics, etc. But I can't justify paying money for a computer I won't use. But a free Mac, I could never turn down.

Have fun!

 

[GimmeSlack12]

I don't really share the enthusiasm, but hearing the sound of a floppy drive working still brings back plenty of memories of my original LC.

 

[krye]

Nice! Congrats.

Every now and then, I search eBay and Craigslist for Color Classics, etc. But I can't justify paying money for a computer I won't use. But a free Mac, I could never turn down.

Have fun!

Hey, if I could score a Mac Plus or an SE for like $20-40 bucks I'd go for it. It would be nice to just have one around for nostalgia.

 

[Mac SK]

I did press releases on one back in 2003 with a 2400 printer and no one new
the difference. The client thought they came off the newest cutting edge PC.

 

[velocityg4]

You could still type up documents with Word 5 and make spreadsheets though I am not sure what version of Excel I would assume 5.

If interested I could post a link to a classic Macs game site and other helpful System 7 links. The game site has abandonware games for download and lists on their main page that they will remove any the original publishers want removed. So I guess they would be greyware since the publishers don't seem to care.

I am not sure but you may be able to run Mac OS 7.6.1 on the LCIII. I think there are also hacks to run 8 on 68030's even though 68040's were officially the minimum but it would be slow. Actually 7.6 would be pretty slow since it is much larger and more feature rich than System 7.1 even 7.5

 

[Scooby_Doo]

Oh the early days

After Dark! Great, Starry Night was simple but my favorite.

Also is that a Crystal Quest install disk I see? Great game, sort of lived on through games like GridWars on OS X.

Great find, enjoy!

 

[jodelli]

I used to have an LC 475, which is basically a 40 version of the LC III's 68030.
Seem to remember 7.5.3 working well on it.

 

[krye]

After Dark! Great, Starry Night was simple but my favorite.

Also is that a Crystal Quest install disk I see? Great game, sort of lived on through games like GridWars on OS X.

Great find, enjoy!

No, Math Quest. The guy I got it from had a bunch of educational stuff for his kids.

This weekend I'm going to have a go at trying the peroxide/oxy solution trick thing to remove that yellowing that happens to old computer equipment:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=458725#post458725

 

[Hrududu]

Those Style Writer II printers aren't too bad! You can still find the ink for them at OfficeMax right off the shelf.

 

[krye]

Those Style Writer II printers aren't too bad! You can still find the ink for them at OfficeMax right off the shelf.

Cool, I'll have to keep that in mind. Anyone know off hand before I google it if that works on a Mac Plus or SE?

 

[dmr727]

Cool, I'll have to keep that in mind. Anyone know off hand before I google it if that works on a Mac Plus or SE?

Yep! I happen to know from experience that the Stylewriter will work with Systems as early as 6.0.8, possibly 6.0.7 as well.

Great find, BTW!

 

[krye]

Yep! I happen to know from experience that the Stylewriter will work with Systems as early as 6.0.8, possibly 6.0.7 as well.

Great find, BTW!

Cool. Thanks. I actually got off my butt and googled it. Found this...
http://home24.inet.tele.dk/ccadams/se/printer.html

I'm also going to try to restore the finish using the peroxide/oxy treatment. I'm going to start tomorrow with the keyboard and mouse. If that works, then I'll do the case and monitor. See here for instructions: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=39531&osborne

This thing will look sweet once I restore the color and get rid off the nasty yellowing. It's also a test-bed for the Mac Plus and SE that I just bought off eBay. Can't wait for them to be delivered!

 

[jodelli]

I had a Mac Plus that connected through the 9 pin serial port to a Stylewriter. As has been mentioned it can use Canon cartridges as I found out when I got my Canon BJ-10E portable to replace an Atari printer.

 

[Voidness]

My first Mac was an LCIII! I remember my father getting one when I was in grade 3. I spent countless hours in it learning Photoshop 2 and playing with Hypercard. I think it still works perfectly.

System 7, great memories.