Hi from Minnesota - TinkerDifferent

I discovered this forum after watching a video by @Mu0n on YouTube where he shows how he added HDMI output to some early compact Macs. I noticed that some people on YouTube were posting video captures from early Macs and wondered how it was done. I was interested because I actually have a use for that.

Anyway, it led me here.

I've been a font developer for decades and did my earliest digital fonts on Macs in the late eighties. Before that I was a graphic designer and art director, where I exclusively used Macs. And I always had one myself.

Consequently, I've owned a lot of Macs over the years, going back to the very first one. Many of them wound up getting passed on or sold to other people. I always kept a few, and even acquired a bunch of SEs and similar around 2000 that were left for trash. (I'm ashamed to admit that I brought most of them to an electronics recycler a few years later. I didn't know what else to do with them at the time.) I got rid of most of my remaining old Macs in 2015 when we were renovating our house, this time donating them to Free Geek in Minneapolis. The only one I kept was a G4 Cube, which I bought new in 2000, just because it was such a rare and unique Mac.

A few years ago, after successfully getting the Cube up and running again, I started acquiring old Macs again, with a bit more purpose. I'd been using Mac emulators more and more to access old documents (going back to 1984) and for running old apps. I decided it would be even better on the real hardware. I've now got a machine for each major version of Mac OS:

- Macintosh Plus (System 6)
- PowerBook 180 (System 7)
- PowerBook G3 Lombard (MacOS 8)
- Macintosh G4 Cube (MacOS 9 and Mac OS X Tiger)
- 2009 17" PowerBook (Mac OS X Snow Leopard)

These are all equipped with SSDs in some form, with maxed out RAM. I love the idea of combining modern tech with vintage tech to improve things in a way that would have been impossible (or extremely expensive) when the machines were current.

I'm not much good at soldering, but I'm not afraid to get into these old beasts.

(I also have some vintage Atari 8-bit machines, which I used before getting a Mac.)

I don't know how active I will be here, but it looks like a great place.

(Pictured below, my pride and joy, the 500 MHz G4 Cube with 22" Cinema Display and original speakers, equipped with internal SSD, 1.5GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce 2MX.)

[Image: IMG_2722.jpeg]

Welcome! I have been frequenting Free Geek almost weekly now, rescuing old mac projects when they are available and within my budget. A lot of macs passed through my hands as well, and I didn't really consider myself a collector of sorts, until 2023.

Beautiful Cube setup! Almost exactly the same as my own. Might be my favorite computer design of all time (either that or the iMac G4).

It is indeed sad to think about how much of this vintage tech was lost during the '90s and 2000s ... so many stories of compact Macs, Lisas, NeXT etc. being tossed or recycled. There was a loooong period of time when you couldn't even give a lot of that stuff away. Glad that there is a much larger community built up around them today.

This is almost my exact set up from when I bought the Cube in 2000, except for the RAM, SSD, and video upgrades. The keyboard, mouse, and display were long gone, so I acquired replacements more recently.

Welcome to the asylum. A friend of mine from one of the other forums I frequent (a Volvo car forum) lives in Saint Paul as well.

Anyway, decent Mac arsenal.

More greetings from a fellow Minnesotan and Free Geek'er! Seems like we may be approaching critical mass for a meetup/swap meet this summer! That's good, as I should probably be shedding a lot of beige that's been languishing in my basement too long.

Welcome from another MN vintage Mac user! That's a beautiful Cube setup you've got there. It sounds like we've got enough locals for some LAN gaming now! :)

And yet, any Minnesota vintage Mac user here in New Ulm.

Welcome to TinkerDifferent fellow G4 Cube lover! There's good reason I've made the Cube my Avatar for all of these years. The industrial design has stood the test of time. Don't listen to the naysayers who claim the Cube was a "failed product" because that only speaks of price and marketing, not of what makes the Cube so fantastic to behold.

>> JDW said:

I only had a small experience with a G4 Cube as I supported teachers in a middle school who had them.
I never had one as my own machine. Wondering if I should add one to my own collection of retro vintage Macs.

>> lundpk said:

Wondering if I should add one to my own collection of retro vintage Macs. Click to expand...

My Avatar shows my bias, so it goes without saying I will suggest to get a Cube. Honestly, it's about the only PPC Mac I am enthusiastic about. Aside from the two Cubes I own, the only other PPC Macs I own are a pair PowerBook Wallsteet PDQs, which have problems I've not been able to repair.

>> JDW said:

Right now, my collection is very small. I have a 512K Classic Mac that is fully recapped and floppy rebuilt.

A PowerMac 7600 that I have 3D printed some parts for and am currently updating with BlueSCSI. The floppy and CD drives are in working order. The power supply is fine, but probably needs recapped in future.

The other inherited Mac is a rare bird - a PowerBook G3 Kanga (shortest lived Mac model ever) with clean and like new plastics, awesome screen, floppy, and still working hard drive. There is the issue of the missing CD module. I need that CD drive to have a usable unit if I ever want to repalce the HD with a PATA IDE drive or other modern storage device.

Perhaps than a G4 Cube can be a next project.