iFixit Tear Down The 1984 128K Macintosh

It is crazy to think that the Apple Mac is now over 30 years old, sure it came out the year I was born, so I wasn’t exactly capable of enjoying it at the time, but its certainly amazing to see just how far computer technology has come along in my own lifetime. To celebrate the 30 years of the Mac, the team of at iFixit decided to strip one apart and see just how repairable the system would be by modern standards.

30 years ago the Macintosh 128K went on sale for $2,495, which in today’s world would be more than $5500! Just look at the computer you can buy these days for over $5500! A staggering example of just how far we have come in the last 30 years, that being said, I don’t think I’ve ever owned a system that costs that much, even my current one would likely max out around $2,000 for a system integrator.

iFixit score the repairability of the systems they take apart on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being an absolute nightmare to repair and 10 being the easiest. The Mac scored a healthy 7/10 after their tests. They did find it difficult to open, and the fact that the RAM is soldered to the logic board was also a big problem. Fortunately the rest of it is big chunky components that are by today’s standards quite easy to work with, although I doubt many of us will need to open one up to fix it, it’s still fun to have a peak for old times sake.

Equipped with an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor, 128KB DRAM, a 9″ black and white CRT @ 512 x 342 pixels and 72 dpi and 400 KB total storage via a single-sided 3.5″ floppy mean the system is far from high-spec, but at the time this was a powerful and innovative machine. They’re also worth a small fortune, so if you have one in the garage, I wouldn’t suggest you take it apart any time soon, perhaps putting it on eBay would be a better idea.

Thank you Geeky Gadgets for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of iFixit.