Macintosh Plus – Platinum Gray

First shipped in 1986, the Mac Plus was the third Macintosh ever made (4th if you count the 512k, 5th if you count the Macintosh XL). It came with 1MB of memory on the same 68000 processor as the original Mac, but was expandable to up to 4MB RAM and could support a standard SCSI hard drive via an external connector.

Since this unit was in Apple’s “Platinum” gray color scheme, that means it was shipped in 1987 or later. I acquired the main unit from a volunteer at Syd Bolton’s PC Museum, after Syd passed. It was in decent cosmetic condition, but needed standard refurbishing. I had a platinum extended keyboard in storage since I was in high school, and found a matching mouse on eBay (which looked and worked great, but had a stiff cable.)

The radial capacitors on the analog board were replaced, and the solder points for the flyback transformer were re-flowed, and the RAM was maxed out. I cleaned battery residue from the connectors and installed a new clock battery. The eject gear on the floppy drive had broken and was replaced with a part from Retro Fixes, and the drive was cleaned and lubricated. The entire unit was disassembled and cleaned, then retro-brighted using a mixture of 40v liquid peroxide and hot water in a clear tub left in the sun.

The result was fantastic — possibly the best cosmetic condition I’ve ever seen, with a great color match between components. Everything was fully functional after a total project cost of around $150. The completed project was sold to a collector in Seattle for $190, in May of 2019, and I learned a valuable lesson about the cost of shipping — which greatly exceeded the budgeted $40 to break even.

A video of this unit in action can be seen here:

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