25 Years of Mac: Dirk Spennemann’s 128k Mac
1:46 am, January 25th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
Australian Cult reader Dirk Spennemann is one of those lucky people who, on starting a new job where everyone’s on Windows boxes, can insist on a Mac. His fabulous photo set demonstrates just how much he admires these old Macs, but we wanted to know how he got his hands on that 128k.
Here’s his story:
“My first computing experience was on a Televideo CPM machine, followed by a cloned IBM PC AT, which I used in fieldwork in Tonga in 1985/86. In 1989 I took up a new job, was ‘forced’ into a Mac (a IIx) and never looked back. When I took up my current job here at Charles Sturt University, I made it a condition of hiring that I would get a Mac. Up to then it had been a closed Microsoft/IBM shop.
“Since then I have owned/been using a range of Macs. For the first few years it was a desktop machine and a Powerbook (145, 160, 520). With the introduction of the Powerbook G3 I dispensed with the desktop machines. Going through a succession of notebooks, I am now working with a MacBook Pro 15″.
“I acquired the 128k Mac at a trash-and-treasure markets in early 1993 purely as a collector’s item. I had recognised that computing had changed forever with the Mac and I wanted an Australia-sold example of the type. It is fully functional, but has never been actively used. Since then I have given away all the other Mac I had accumulated bar a Macintosh 512k with all the extras, incl. manual, original disks, disk drive, carry case, and third-party numeric keypad with trackball,.
“Would I start up and use the 128k again? Not really. I am far too busy for this at the moment.”
(Image and story courtesy Dirk HR Spennemann, Albury, Australia. Thanks Dirk!)
Posted by Giles Turnbull in 25 Years of Mac, Cult of Mac, Hardware, News, Vintage Tech | Comment on this article
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