Debugging Apple History, One Boot at a Time.

Rare

The original. Thirty seconds of startup, a single floppy drive, and 128 kilobytes of RAM shared between the OS and every application. It changed everything despite being not quite enough.

Common

The machine that saved Apple. Bondi blue, egg-shaped, handle on top. No floppy drive — a decision so controversial it dominated the tech press for months. Jobs was right.

Uncommon

The definitive compact Mac. A 16 MHz 68030 and 68882 FPU in the same beige box that started in 1984. Ran circles around most of the Mac II line despite being a "compact." The last of the original form factor, and the best.

Very Rare

Acquired new in 1998, right after college graduation, for $50. The NextStation was NeXT's 'affordable' workstation — $5,000 retail. UNIX underneath, a Mach microkernel, Display PostScript for the screen. Every web server concept we use today was proven on these machines. This one has been running, in some form, ever since.

Very Rare

The machine Steve Jobs built after Apple fired him. $6,500 in 1990. An optical magneto drive, a built-in DSP chip for audio, a 68040 running at 25MHz. The OS — NeXTSTEP — was so far ahead of its time that Apple bought the entire company in 1997 just to get it. Every concept in macOS traces back to this cube.

Rare

Apple's first attempt at a serious business machine — and a cautionary tale about what happens when a CEO overrules the engineers. Over 14,000 were recalled at launch to fix chips that literally popped out of their sockets. Steve Wozniak's original design was deemed 'too cheap.' The result nearly killed the company.

Featured

One of only 10,000 ever made. The only all-black Mac Apple ever sold commercially. It had a real TV tuner — you could watch cable through your Mac. Fully recapped analog board and logic board. Still works, including the TV.

Rare

Suspended in a perfect acrylic cube. No fan. Touch-sensitive power switch. The most beautiful computer Apple ever made, and a commercial failure — $1,799 when consumers expected $1,299. This one has been upgraded to 1GHz.

Rare

Apple called it 'wicked fast' in the ads. At $10,000 in 1990, it cost more than most cars. The IIfx used a 40 MHz 68030, dedicated I/O processors for each expansion slot, and custom DRAM timing Apple developed in-house. The fastest 68030 Mac ever shipped.

Very Rare

The Lisa cost $9,995 in 1983 — over $30,000 today. It was the first commercial personal computer with a true graphical interface. Apple sold fewer than 10,000. This machine was dead when acquired in 2023; two years of work later, it runs perfectly. Recapped PSU and video board, restored keyboard, 32GB ESProfile emulator.

Very Rare

2,000 units, each hand-delivered by a Macintosh specialist in a business suit, with a bottle of champagne. This one runs Mac OS 9, BeOS 5.0.3, and has been upgraded to a G3 400MHz. Twenty years of Apple history in a single machine.

Common

The FDHD ('SuperDrive') could read 1.44MB disks and DOS disks. A single machine that bridged Apple and IBM-compatible worlds at a time when that was revolutionary. The /030 variant dropped a 68030 into the same compact body — same box, four years of evolution.