Macintosh Plus
Processor: 8 mhz Motorola 6800
Floppy Disk drive: 800k double sided floppy drive
Optical drive: N/A
Standard memory: 1 megabyte
Upgraded memory: 4 megabytes
Built-in display: 9 inch CRT monochrome display
Resolution: 512×342
Sound: 8-bit Mono
Ports: 1x “phone cable” port, 1x DB19 floppy port, 1x DB25 SCSI “Scuzzy”, 2x serial ports, 1x security lock
Original Price: $2,500
Hello there and welcome to the first addition of the Museum of Apple Computers. Today we are going to talk about the Macintosh Plus. The Macintosh Plus was introduced in 1986 and it was discontinued all the way up to 1990, which meant it had one of the longest lifespans of any Macintosh computers along with the iMac G3. The Macintosh 128k, even tough it had 128 kilobytes of memory, it had a 400k floppy disk, which had bigger memory than the computer itself and even with an external hard drive, it runs pretty slow compared to it’s competitors. The Macintosh 512k had more memory than it’s predecessor, but it still had a 400k floppy disk drive and it still wasn’t enough to keep up with the high-end buisness market. When the Macintosh Plus was introduced, the 400k floppy disk drive was replaced by an 800k floppy disk drive and it had more memory than it’s predecessors. The Macintosh Plus came with a megabyte of memory as standard and it can be upgraded up to 4 megabytes of memory, at the time this computer was released that was a lot memory. This computer has an 8 megahertz Motorola 6800 processor, which is the same processor found on it’s predecessors, which is slow for today’s standards, but back then it was a pretty fast machine it was even faster than it’s predecessors.
Keep in mind, this computer came out in the 80’s, which means that you aren’t going to find any USB ports, FireWire ports, or even WiFi. On the back for ports, we have a Floppy port, 2 serial ports and don’t be fooled to think that this is a parallel port, because it is completely different. It is called an SCSI Port aka. a Scuzzy Port. You know what?, I’m going to call this port by it’s nickname for now on. You know what the say?, If you can’t beat em, you might as well join them!. Now what do they call an IDE port, an Ideally port?. This computer also has a phone cable port on the front, for hoking hoking up a keyboard, it’s actually pretty clever to have the phone cable port on the front, but for the mouse. You hook it up by using a serial port and this computer came out before ADB ports were available on Macintosh computers. One thing I forgot to mention is that even tough the computer itself came out in 1986, this particular model I have came out in 1988. The Macintosh Plus was being overshadowed by the Macintosh SE and the Macintosh II, but this was being sold as a cheaper alternative to the Macintosh SE and later the Macintosh SE/30 until the Macintosh Classic came out.
Alright it’s all hoked up and ready to go. This computer comes with the original apple keyboard and the original block-shaped apple mouse, It really does feel like you are holding a block. Since I don’t have an external hard drive or a boot disk for it, stay tuned for when demonstrate the good old Macintosh Plus.
Museum of apple computers 