(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)

Top stories

Filter posts by: Mac iOS Hardware Software

25 Years of Mac: Classic Macs Still at Work

By Leander Kahney (9:39 pm, Jan 23 2009)

25 Years of Mac: Classic Macs Still at Work

Story and photos by Natalie Guillén

SANTA FE, New Mexico — As Arch Sproul unpacked half a dozen Macintosh Classic IIs, all six of his employees hovered around in excitement.

It was fall of 1992, and most of the employees had never used a computer before.

Today, four of those original computers are still in use, working overtime seven days a week at the Virginia Trading Post arts and crafts store, nestled next to dozens of other shops downtown. They are used mainly as cash registers, scanning bar codes, and keeping tabs on inventory.

The machines are rare examples of aging Macs that are still in daily use. They are a testament to the utility and longevity of the Mac, which celebrates its 25th anniversary on Sunday.

25 Years of Mac: Classic Macs Still at Work

Currently the three Mac Classic IIs (1991) and the single Power Macintosh 7500/100 (1992) are linked through ethernet to a newer server on a Mac Desktop G3  in an upstairs office.

It was in 1980 that Sproul opened the Virginia Trading Post. He’d obtained a perfect location, right in the middle of Santa Fe’s downtown tourist plaza.

By 1991, he was looking for a point of sale system made by Apple. According to Sproul, his friends were having nothing but problems from their IBM systems.

Choosing two employees, Sproul began teaching them the basics. As Sproul pecked at the keys after unwrapping the Macintosh Classic IIs, employee Maria Castillo peered over the shoulders of her co-workers, anxious to understand. When they finished, Sproul noticed Castillo’s eagerness and asked if she had learned everything from watching.

“Yep. I got it,” said Castillo.

“She was really into learning,” said Sproul explained this week. “She was so smart and so good with it, I made her my manager.”

A former Apple executive, Charles Redmond, flew out from New Jersey to help Sproul install POS-IM software (point of sale inventory management), owned by Ensign systems, onto the new computers.

“They [the Mac Classic IIs] were ridiculously expensive for that time: $2,000 for a classic with 20 megabytes of memory,” remembered Sproul. “It looked like a little R2-D2, from Star Wars.”

Though Sproul sold the store in 2003, he keeps in touch with the new owners, and hasn’t heard any plans to upgrade the equipment.

“The first couple of years were wonderful,” recalls Castillo, the only former employee still working at the trading post. “I used to love them, but now I hate them.”

25 Years of Mac: Classic Macs Still at Work

Every morning, after whirring to life, the classic machines register the date as “August 27th, 1856.” It is simple to reset. In recent months, the computers have been taking longer and longer to access inventory, so Castillo has been recording it by hand.

Sproul has only fond memories. “I was so excited back then. We thought this was screaming, such a fast computer!”

Today customers always notice the classic computers, laughing as they wonder aloud if the machines should be behind glass as collectors editions or more commonly, used as a fishbowl at home.

Admitting that every computer has it’s own use, the former owner of Virginia Trading Post concurs that any Mac over a decade old cannot suffice for many of today’s jobs, much less, utilizing the world-wide web.

The newest program loaded onto the Power Mac is Windows Excel98, because all upgrades after that are only offered on CD, and these old classics only take disks.

“In a time where people were always looking for bigger, faster, better –  well, these got the job done, and they still do,” concluded Sproul.

His worthy investment might even outlast him.

25 Years of Mac: Classic Macs Still at Work

25 Years of Mac: Classic Macs Still at Work

25 Years of Mac: Classic Macs Still at Work

25 Years of Mac: Classic Macs Still at Work

25 Years of Mac: Classic Macs Still at Work

34 comments »

More from Cult of Mac

About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by .

Posted in 25 Years of Mac, News, Top stories |

  • king

    A very interesting article, I like to see old macs put in use.
    And they say macs are not business…..

  • Ansel

    We retired a 1998 server – ran 24 hours day non-stop – cept’ twice to clean out the dust … Still runs but had to update to 10.5 – otherwise we would still be running with filemaker 4.0 and our database ……

  • firesign

    i can beat that. :) we still have two apple //e with their original green screens and floppy drives running some educational software here at work.

  • Bryce Howard

    Thats great to know that there are some old macs out there.
    I got a 1989 Mac SE that boots up faster than my Win98′ Compaq.
    So to everyone out there with the old mac’s keep ‘em runnin’.

  • mellow7

    fantastic stuff… although they should last that long for what they cost in those days :) Seriously though, that is great stuff.

  • Julian Skidmore

    Hi just a small correction,

    The PowerMac 7500/100 was introduced in late 1995 shortly after the PowerMac 7200 (PowerPC Macintoshes didn’t appear until 1994).

    -cheers from julz @P

  • a person

    We have 7 year old Power Macs at our school and they still work flawlessly everyday. Throw video rendering, Photoshop, Livetype, and Motion at them and they have absolutely no problem crunching through them. It’s just amazing how long they last.

  • Bozo

    >$2,000 for a classic with 20 megabytes of memory

    It’s worse than it sounds. That would be 20 Mb of disk. The classic couldn’t take anywhere near that much RAM. I don’t remember where the classic maxes out, but my SE/30 had only 5 Mb.

  • Garrett

    we have old macs in our wood tech class, we use them to design stuff.

  • http://www.philnolan3d.com Phil

    So what? I have a 1982 IBM XT that runs perfectly fine. This means nothing.

  • Andrew Jung

    Tell them to go and pick up some new batteries for the Macs so that the clock is right. The old ones are probably dead and starting to corrode!

  • Bob Haldoff

    yeah, I’d use that to run my business. what a joke.

  • b

    7 years is nothing, the G4 tower i got for before going off to uni is almost 9 years old now, and even that doesn’t hold a candle to the LC575 and Apple IIc my dad still has running in his basement. ahh, nothing beats some good ol’ california games on a green and black screen.

  • chrisp

    they really need a new POS system.. my god.. tracking inventory + pos on those machines must be a headache.

    great they still work, thats cool as hell.. but comon.

  • madscientist

    post a list of “classic” PCs that are still running and you’d need more servers to host it. I get the unique value of such a list though. We should post a list of mainframe networks or AOL users.

  • http://the-penciler.blogspot.com/ ThePenciler

    Sounds like the PRAM batteries are dead. Simple fix, just have to be careful not to touch the monitor tube of the Classic. The other Macs are much safer and easier to change the battery in. Man, I wish I was in Santa Fe again. I’d simply volunteer my time to fix them. I mean, if they worked fast before there’s no reason to believe they shouldn’t still. A dead PRAM battery can slow the performance as well.

    And besides, it’s a small tourism business. Not a Fortune 500 corporation. ;)

  • http://OSNews.com Paul Schnitzel

    I paid $3500 for an SE30 from (the late) Sun Computers and under $2000 for a Centris 650. In both instances, their logic (mother?) boards went south. These are the great, wonderful computers for the rest of us? I’ve never, ever had such problems with all of the Wintel machines that I have owned. I paid about $500+ for a Mac Mini (PowerPC) which would not have been enough to repair the SE30.

  • http://qtp.blogspot.com Sachin

    really amazing…Bill just see, your copies work only for 5 years or so….

  • http://www.WhichWebsite.com Mike James

    Nice to look back at Technlogy ;-)

    Guys, I have 10 Promo codes to giveaway for the iPhone App Store. The Giveaway expires on 31st March 2009 so come and grab yourself a Promo code by visiting http://whichwebsite.com/2009/Mar/mms_buddy_iPhone_promo_code_giveaway.html

  • TJ

    Man, I’ve heard of business owners who know how to pinch a penny … but this one wins some kind of Galactic Parsimony Award (or C.A.B. award)

  • Constable Odo

    In a short while, they’ll just chuck all five Macs into the garbage and get one $300 netbook and that will run everything the Macs did. Apparently netbooks will replace all computers. I’m sure the new owner has no love for Macs or else he would have upgraded to newer Macs. I’m rather surprised that the displays lasted as long as they did, though.

  • Daniel B.

    Any old computer can still be used for a business in a specific task (inventory, dedicated word processing, database, etc…) I’m sure there are a lot of TRS-80 model 100s out there still being used for data entry in the field. Some small shops in China probably still use the abacus.

  • FrankEEE

    the wow … hmm … started 1981 really. but this stuff is just amazing! i bet if more mac evangelists read about this store, behold, they’ll soon have more people coming into the store checking out the macs than their actual arts, crafts and pottery – i mean, I’d go there to check it out. will be close soon, so hope i recall ;-) and all that’s left to say is: powerbook g3 bronze keyboard, g4 ibook 1ghz, and powermac g5 1.5GHz – all running – and the pm daily(!) doing graphics, video and sound multi tracking. there’s just something about a mac thats hard to explain …

  • Mikel

    I have an Amiga 1200 and it works perfectly since 1993. I have an 68030 at 50 MHZ accelerator with 16 MB RAM and it runs quite fast.
    And my A500 works since 1988!!!!.

  • http://www.SheevaunMoran.com Sheevaun

    I always tell my friends who are waiting until their PC starts up that my 9 year old laptop still beats the start up time of any new PC. I love the Macs I have, new and old.
    Thanks for sharing.
    They do last longer than any other computer!

  • Sabon

    Some of you have old computers and think it is no big deal because they still run. The question is, are they used in a business setting, even for simple things? Having it at home and able to run is not the same thing.

    As for the computers running slower. My guess is that they haven’t cleaned up the inventory database in a long time and it is taking longer and longer to find things in it.

    As others have noted, the battery on the motherboard should be replaced which would fix the computer showing the wrong date when it boots up.

  • Greg

    That 4th photo down – the dude looks like Sylar taking a break from unzipping people’s heads open. Maybe the ancient Macs makes him realize that they couldn’t possibly possess a power he’d want. ;-p

    Joking aside, my first Mac was the “awesome” Fat Mac (Mac 512K) which I got just months before the Mac Plus came out. I skipped ahead later to the Mac SE, which really was a decent computer (and probably the most direct ancestor of the Mac Classic cited here). Later on, I got a Performa 575, then a PPC 6100, 8500, first gen. iMac, 3rd gen. iMac, and finally a PPC Mac Mini. Some day I may actually get a decent Mac again, but for now I’m on Ubuntu and (gag!) Vista for my laptops.

  • http://1.homeninja.com alexx

    I always tell my friends who are waiting until their PC starts up that my 9 year old laptop still beats the start up time of any new PC. I love the Macs I have, new and old.
    Thanks for sharing.
    They do last longer than any other computer!!

  • Troy Banther

    I went from an LC II, when I was a university student way back before the dawn of time, to an Intel Mac Mini in October 2007. Wonder how long this Mac will last?

  • Runger

    Mac is wonderful!很好很强大！すばらしいね!

  • http://www.biffuz.it/ Biffuz

    That’s nothing compared to this:

    http://it.compvter.wikia.com/wiki/Selenia_GP160

    The labels on the “floppies” suggest that this monster was still being used regularly in 2003.

  • http://www.jamesplee.com James

    I have a IIci I upgraded with a PowerMac card running OS 8.1.
    I have a SE/30 with 50mhz accelerator and the Xceed gray scale video card
    I have a fully loaded and mint NeXT Turbo Cube w/Dimension board
    I’m playing Ultima V on a Color Classic with Apple IIe card
    Next up is to get my A2000 (last rev version) running a 68060 and OS 3.5

    I love these old computers, but for the most part I try not to leave them on for very long as some of them are pushing 30 years old. Once they break they’re (for the most part) done.

  • http://www.techsangv.com sanjeev

    mac are always trustable unlike Microsoft…

  • Charlie Redmond

    Hey Arch!  Glad to hear your system is still rolling!  Crazy after all these years!!!  How many invoices do you suppose have been posted since ’92?

    Charles