25 Years of Mac: Dirk Spennemann’s 128k Mac

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,.

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“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!)

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