The History of the Vintage Mac Museum

The Vintage Mac Museum is a working collection of 68k and PowerPC Macinti tracking the System Software, hardware design and period memorabilia of the pre-Intel Apple Macintosh. The Museum got started in the summer of 2001 while I was playing around with the then-just-released (and long awaited) MacOSX. Reminiscing a bit on Mac history, I realized I’d been a Macintosh user since the Mac Plus but had never used the original System Software. Just how much of the Mac’s later features were contained in that primal core? After a few hours poking around online I’d downloaded some early system disk images and was off and running.

Old 68k Macs were easy to come by, so I decided to assemble a subjective collection of best of breed or otherwise notable models running period applications and versions of the Macintosh System Software. Soon the models began multiplying, friends donated old Macs and I assembled a nice little history of the 68k era. The Museum is a hands-on, functioning collection and I fritter away more time than I should acquiring and cleaning up old machines. But you never know when you might need to read a 400k floppy or run some classic Mac software!

In 2005 Apple shocked the world (again) by announcing its shift to the Dark Side, a transition of the platform from PowerPC to Intel CPUs. Unthinkable only a few years earlier and confirming longstanding rumors, Apple acknowledged that they had been compiling MacOSX on Intel since it’s conversion from NeXTstep. It was a successful move for Apple, and the Mac now has its strongest market share in years. The Intel transition also made a logical boundary point for the Vintage Mac Museum, which has by now expanded beyond its 68k roots into the PowerPC era and become a pre-Intel Macintosh collection.

This blog will describe some of my efforts acquiring, maintaining and using the collection as a Mac hobbyist and professional consultant.