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Rarest 68k Apple Computer?

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Windows2000

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What would be the rarest 68k Macintosh aside from the Macintosh XL? As every computer has sold since the Lisa has been a derivative of the Macintosh, what would be the rarest of the 68k family? Just a curious question since I thought it was the Centris providing it was a short lived line of computers in the early 90s.
 
Are you asking about rare but obtainable or just rare in general? I'm pretty sure the "rarest" right now is the Mac with Twiggy drives but it was a dev prototype so despite the deep pockets of the folks who bought it I don't think it will work for anything useful.
 
Centris brand label was very short lived but computer sales volume had increased a lot. I expect more Centris units were manufactured than all 128k Macs combined.

Excluding prototypes, the Macintosh Portable was probably the model with the fewest units.
 
Original Mac with Twiggy is certainly one of the rarest official Apple Macintosh, but I'm not sure if prototypes would count (or was it a development machine?) Rarest commercially released Macintosh currently is probably the government/scientific grade Macintosh SE (metal case and EMI shield) only sold to governments and scientific institutions. Rarer still are several early licensed clones.

A non-upgraded Lisa 1 is pretty darn rare, most were upgraded to an XL or traded in for a Lisa 2.

The Radius Skylab clone was manufactured, but never released. Very, very, very rarely show up on eBay or whatnot. It was essentially a Macintosh with 8 or 12 NuBUS slots; connected to them a bunch of Radius Rockets all running 68040 CPUs. Used for distributed computing. Apple pulled their licensing after sh*tting themselves when they saw that beast, or so I read.
 
Windows2000 said:
What would be the rarest 68k Macintosh aside from the Macintosh XL? As every computer has sold since the Lisa has been a derivative of the Macintosh, what would be the rarest of the 68k family? Just a curious question since I thought it was the Centris providing it was a short lived line of computers in the early 90s.
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production, or prototype?

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/apple/mac/pictures/Mac_Proto_Case_#15.jpg
is a early prototype in the Computer History Museum Collection.

They also have a Big Mac, and will soon have a YACC (the first color Mac circa 1985)

I don't think any Johnathans ever made it out of the lab.
 
Not prototype, just production. This would limit it down to the Lisa 1 and government specific models. I'm curious on what the rarest clone is but all clones are rare when you break them down to country.
 
Think you're right on both accounts there. Not at all many Lisa 1s (5.25" floppy) for sale these days vs the Lisa 2 (3.5" floppy). I think the last Lisa 1 cleared $10000 IIRC. Your other comment is right also, the most rare clone would be some failed product in X country :) Not sure who the most common one might be, Laser made pretty good clones and is the one I'm most familiar with.
 
How about the various companies who, in their quest to make a portable Macintosh before Apple did, bought complete Macintosh SE computers from Apple, took them apart, repackaged them into a "luggable" case, and resold them to customers?

And then there were people who used Macintosh ROMs -- either copied or genuine -- to run Mac software on their Atari ST computers.
 
vwestlife said:
How about the various companies who, in their quest to make a portable Macintosh before Apple did, bought complete Macintosh SE computers from Apple, took them apart, repackaged them into a "luggable" case, and resold them to customers?
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I thought Mac SE's were luggable. They even have a handle. Given how efficient Apple's case design is, I don't know how you could make it more luggable.

What about the Mac II? I know these were made for a while, but I've never seen one. Seems like the compact macs were way more popular until the 1990s.
 
Hatta said:
I thought Mac SE's were luggable. They even have a handle. Given how efficient Apple's case design is, I don't know how you could make it more luggable.
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They substituted some kind of flat panel display (LCD, or maybe gas plasma) in place of the 9-inch CRT, and I believe you could even get it with a battery pack.

And it might not be the rarest (although it certainly could be), but the Color Classic II is probably the most sought-after classic 68k Mac (aside from the 128K), and it was never sold in the USA.
 
well i can name a few rare ones even though some arent 68s.
color classic i or ii
TAM (Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh)
macintosh performa 410 (extremely rare,manufactered and sold for 2 weeks and was discontinued, i also checked completed listings on ebay and there was just the one that i bidded on and lost :(.
the prototype macintosh with a 5 inch floppy drive (the actual "floppy" disk)
there are alot of rare ones out there. sadly there so expensive on ebay most people cant afford them (i saw a lisa for over $25,000!) or the price is just not worth it.
 
Ole Juul said:
All floppies are floppy. The name comes from the flexible media and not the envelope. :)
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According to IBM, the correct term for either size is "diskette". :) (And I would presume they referred to 8-inch floppies as just "disk" instead of "diskette", since "-ette" is a diminutive suffix.)

But in the early to mid '90s, I heard some uninformed users refer to 3½-inch diskettes as "hard disks"; their reasoning being that a 5¼" diskette was floppy, while a 3½" was hard. I swear I even saw one TV sitcom in that era in which the characters were setting up a new computer, and when the instructions referred to the "hard disk", one person grabbed a 3½" diskette, tried to bend it, and then said "this must be the hard disk!"

And curiously today, some people refer to the entire system unit of a computer as a "hard drive". For example, at work one person asked me to bring in her "hard drive" from her car, when she actually meant the entire Dell tower in her trunk.
 
I think that might have to do with the advertising and such, I've read computer setup guides that refer to the tower as the CPU, when in reality the CPU is maybe a 2"x2" chip.
 
I'd hazard a guess and say the Powerbook 550c- it was only sold in Japan- this one http://www.forevermac.com/1995/05/apple-powerbook-550c-laptop/. It had the full fat 68040 and was the only powerbook to ship with it (unlike the 520, 540, 190c and 190cs). Other than that, there's probably a few Performas that would be extremely rare (they were used predominantly in schools so were junked within years). OOh hang on, there's also the Apple TV- sold only in the US. It's the only 68k mac to have sold in the US in Black and with the TV tuner card installed
 
richardtj said:
I'd hazard a guess and say the Powerbook 550c-

there's also the Apple TV- sold only in the US. It's the only 68k mac to have sold in the US in Black and with the TV tuner card installed
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I have seen a 550 or 2 on Ebay ... as well as the Mac TV ... more Mac TV's on ebay then anything - usually people asking a very steep price - it was the only 68k mac to come in Black

as far as the TV Tuner Card ... I have seen more that a few Mac's with the TV Video system ... can all of them be after market or dealer added upgrades ?
 
And then there were people who used Macintosh ROMs -- either copied or genuine -- to run Mac software on their Atari ST computers.
Click to expand...

ratpatrol said:
HUH ?
I never heard that
Click to expand...

Ooooh yeah. For a while, the Atari ST with Spectre 128 (the last and best Mac emulator) was in many ways superior to a real Mac Plus or SE. Because compatibility was near perfect,and the ST had a bigger screen.

I fondly remember Spectre. I actually became an Apple software developer which helped me pay my way through university. All on the lovely old ST. Never touched a real Mac at the time! Spectre 128 ran almost all software. Almost. It just didn't run the debugger of my C compiler, which kind of hurt when you're developing serious applications.

In the olden days, I had the real Spectre which came on a cartridge. These days, I live in sin by using a cracked version that's just a piece of software. But if I ever can find the original on eBay, I'm a buyer!

Regards,

Oscar.
 
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