Though I acquired the 701c before I got the Mac Classic, I had stars in my eyes from the miniscule Macintosh. I’m going to rectify that now via this piece. For those of you who don’t know, the IBM ThinkPad 701c is not a new machine, and, true to my nature, its a laptop. Its a special laptop, though, as it is unique among lappys. What makes it unique is its “Butterfly” keyboard. You see, the keyboard is wider than the laptop is, and thats not magic.

It performs its trick via some very clever mechanical machinations. As you lift the lid of the lappy it actuates a gear which causes the two halves of the keyboard to move outward and join together. It works because the engineers at IBM were very, very cool. To see it in action, check out this YouTube video.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Retro Tech-o-rama

Apple blew the computer industry wide open with the Macintosh in 1984 by delivering an all-in-one system that was compact and easy to use. Six years later they introduced the Mac Classic, a 68k based system running at 8MHz and packed with 1MB of RAM and a spacious 40MB hard drive. This system, the Mac Classic, is the one that I just picked up.

Not only did I get the computer, but also the original box! The only thing I don’t have is that cute little square one-button mouse. It came with System 7.0.1 already installed and has a selection of applications installed, including Microsoft Word! By any modern scale, this thing is slow, but I so love old gear, I don’t care.

Now all I need is some SCSI gear to get it upgraded

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Retro Tech-o-rama