The Macintosh Plus - The Best Retro Macintosh?

The Macintosh Plus is one of my favorite retro computers in my collection.  It's understood that the first Macintosh has the most value, as does the first of anything, but in this case the Mac Plus is the last of the "original" Macs.  It's got the same industrial design (the same shape), and the early machines in the run have the same color as the originals.  These computer are significantly more useful, as they can have up to 4MB RAM, an external SCSI connector, and can run System 7.  Also, the double sided drive allows the system to read and write the original disks, but is also more practical should you want to run off floppies for nostalgia purposes, since you can have a boot disk and a program on the same disk.

The SCSI port is compatible with the SCSI2SD hard drive replacement,  I have two examples of the Mac Plus, a unit from 1986 and another from 1989, and they both work with SCSI2SD after using these settings.  From reading online, I believe that there were some special features added to the SCSI2SD to support these machines, but it's possible that early ROM versions of the Plus won't boot off SCSI2SD.  Personally, I've gotten Mac OS Version 4.1 up to 7.5.5 installed and booting off of 2GB partitions, but I didn't set up SCSI2SD to simulate a Mac drive, so I had to use Lido to get the drives setup.  I also have a FloppyEmu, which I normally use on the Apple IIs, but it's quite useful for bootstrapping these machines when it's time to install a new version of Mac OS, or load programs.

I've used both the SCSI2SD 5.5 in the external case, and most recently, I've transplanted a Version 5.1 device into the External SCSI enclosure shown above to simulate a somewhat more period correct look.  I documented that build in another article here.

My 1986 Mac Plus had been experiencing problems with overheating.  I recently brought it back onto the workbench, opened it up, and was able to replace a bad capacitor on the Power Supply board that had started to show signs of leakage.  I had not noticed this before during previous repairs, so I went carefully over the entire board.  I also ended up breaking off the fuse holder on the board, but that was a very inexpensive part from DigiKey.  While doing these repairs, I also installed a 12volt 60mm fan that I had on hand inside the case.  The machines’s been running much better now after a couple of day long burn in sessions, so I’m greatly relieved to have what is currently the oldest Mac in my collection working well again.