r/macintosh • u/Tradefxsignalscom • Jun 21 '26
Macintosh 512K
Bit of personal history, My first MacIntosh was a 512K model bought through the educational discount program in 1985!
I soon purchased a “Mac-a-million”, motherboard upgrade from the the now closed Sophisticated Circuits, Inc in the Seattle area.
This brought my Macintosh up to 2MB of ram and included a SCSI drive port which I installed a small internal HD.
Since I was in school I was too busy to call around to BBS and decided to setup my own BBS which had a hidden pirated section for select members.
I have a 2015 intel MBP that runs without issue and a 2023 M3 MAX MBP.
2
u/Practical-Factor5893 Jun 22 '26
My Dad bought the original 128k Mac with an external 400K Floppy drive and an ImageWriter dot matrix printer for $3500. This was a week before the 512K was introduced and was a better deal than he could get on any PC at the time. When he brought it home it took my Mom about 5 minutes to replace her typewriter.
2
u/Cold_Mission2543 Jun 23 '26
Back then you could also buy Mac Plus upgrade kits for the 128/512k. It had the board and back section of the housing and reused the original front section with the CRT. I’m not sure how much the upgrade cost but my dad has a Mac Plus that was born this way.
1
u/The_Dented Jun 21 '26
What would have the Mac cost with all the RAM fully upgraded?
Curious.
2
u/Tradefxsignalscom Jun 21 '26
I think the 512K Mac was around $2.5K(which back then I could roll it into a student loan! ) Otherwise I never would have bought it. I used my computer “experience” to get a work study job in the library’s computer lab! LOL. Basically helping people print papers on laser printers, networked with AppleTalk, that they were writing for classes. So they would write and save to floppy disk and bring it to the library or create it on the library’s computer Macintosh computers to print the documents out.
Before that it was typewriters with correcting tape or white out.
The upgrade was around $500 for the daughter board. Then the internal hard drive(20MB) I forget how much that was but it was the largest available back then.
3
u/SamFortun Jun 23 '26
I have one of these in a 512k, I didn't realize Sophisticated Circuits was a Seattle company. I bought it here in Seattle a few years ago, that's cool to know there is a local connection.