Racintosh Plus – Rackmount Mac Plus | Hacker News Reader

Racintosh Plus – Rackmount Mac Plus

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147 pointszdw42 comments

I lost my beloved Mac Plus, the computer that made me become a programmer, because of COVID.

Shortly before COVID hit, I fired it up to see if it still worked, and within like a minute, a certain capacitor (that is a common and well-known failure point) fried, and it was dead. I brought it to a computer repair store to fix, and then COVID and its lockdowns hit.

When I returned months later to see what was up after my phone calls weren't returned, turns out the whole place had shut down and I to this day have no idea where my Mac Plus went. :/

Sounds like your Mac Plus died with covid (and really irresponsible customer property management), but not from covid…

Unless they edited their comment, they never said it died from COVID, but because of COVID.

out of curiosity, did you really think the GP thought COVID killed the computer which is an inanimate object that required this level of pedantry?

He was making a pun on the common practice during COVID of attributing death in death to certificates to COVID whenever the patient presented a positive PCR test, no matter the real cause of death, the actual existence of COVID disease in clinical terms or the existence of more preeminent factors in the death.

This usually happened due mostly as a result of federal policy of paying out extra money for hospitals based on the number of covid patients, thus creating an incentive of diagnosing anyone with a positive PCR test as sick from covid, whether they presented actual clinical symptoms of the disease or not.

That seems made up, do you have a credible source for that?

Sounds made up to me, too. Unless he lives in some country where that happened.

In many places in the United States it was unusual for COVID to be listed as a cause of death in paperwork. Often it was listed a something coronary or pulmonary. This isn't unique to COVID, but happened a lot more with that disease, especially before there were vaccines and the stigma was stronger.

The actual number of COVID deaths is estimated because policies varied so much among different political jurisdictions.

Source: Work in the healthcare industry, and had relatives die of COVID who ended up with something else listed on their death certificates.

You're correct, but "hospitals overcounted COVID deaths and the pandemic wasn't that bad" is unfortunately a conspiracy theory: https://kffhealthnews.org/news/how-covid-death-counts-become...

Well, at least they acknowledge there was a pandemic.

There's still plenty of people who don't believe 1,100,000 Americans died of COVID. These same people also wonder why it suddenly became harder to find workers.

my understanding/recollection is that it was necessary for surveillance to note when decedents had COVID; it was listed as a (contributing or underlying, not sure of the jargon) cause, and so depending on how you cut the data you could count it either way -- tally all deaths with COVID as deaths from COVID (bigger), or only those where COVID was the main cause (smaller).

"RIFA madness"?

How

Capacitors die. The original Xbox notoriously suffers from this issue; very few will boot up nowadays without a hardware fix.

They had me at "4 months of work just to make a stupid pun."

Brilliant. Got my old Macintosh Plus out a few months ago and flipped it on and unfortunately that let out some of the “magic smoke” that keeps all electronics running. I think it’s an electrolytic cap that blew. Just too old. Will have to find time to refurb it.

Always look at caps and look for/test corrosion shorts before energizing old gear.

Caps are easy fixes if you can get the board out. Use quality electrolytic caps if bothering to go through the trouble, or I'd see if modern ceramic alternatives exist that will essentially last forever. (Don't get me started on how (vintage) tantalums suck.)

Yea, I should have done that, but I just flipped the switch. My bad. Yea, I’ll see what’s available. It’s a project that I probably won’t get to for a while, unfortunately. Plus, I don’t even think I own a soldering iron anymore, which is ironic for an old hardware engineer.

Try to fix it first. It may only have damaged a few components.

Apt username :)

I've preserved a number of machines by building them in to rackmount cases. It never occurred to me to make a faux product out of them. This is amazing! The graphics and detail are wonderful.

It's crucial to label, in large, letters, "BUTTONS" and "MICRO-SD SLOT", in case you forget later.

Already bought the label maker, may as well use that bad boy.

My thoughts exactly. In my experience the first label should be for the label maker itself. Just continue with that mindset.

A friend once got so carried away with the label-maker that he labeled everything in my house, including my cat.

Apparently the poem[0] isn't up-to-date with technology. The name shown on the label should be on the list.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naming_of_Cats

I zoomed into the photo to check that out after you pointed it out. I initially assumed it would've been placeholders that were labeled, since writing `DISPLAY` on your screen doesn't make sense, but the buttons and MicroSD slot are obviously there. The text for the MicroSD slot extends past the edge of the front surface, though, so it's not actually physically labeled-- just labeled in the image with a perspective effect. I assume it's because the buttons are a bit hard to see (and it's not obvious the display is a display without it being turned on).

Reminds me very much of my college project where my roommates and I repackaged a Commodore 64 into an IBM PC form factor, complete with external keyboard.

Difficulty: College was in a town without a Radio Shack, and none of us had cars.

Dana "Nanoraptor" Sibera designed a tower C64. In an ideal world, that's how a PC-cased C64 would look, complete with its keyboard:

https://bsky.app/profile/nanoraptor.danamania.com/post/3k47g...

Better still... someone built it for real:

https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/1iqth0...

I think I've seen such a conversion, and am now frantically searching for it but with all the wrong keywords it seems!

There was also a "shucked" 1541 PCB and drive fitted in the top section of a tower case and IIRC in the post I've read they have served all power demands either from a standard PSU or an off-the-shelf power supply module.

I wish I still had my Mac Plus. Upgraded from a 512Ke, 40Mb drive, and a Radius 020 accelerator with 68881. Still limited to 4Mb, And I ran 7.0.1 and 6.0.8. Any testing with The two screen panning programs? Stepping out II? I played Spaceward Ho! to death on it.

I love this so much. Space saved, hardware hackage, and improved with modern substitutes.

I kinda wished it had a panoply of external SCSI devices like a floppy drive, a CD ROM, and a ZIP drive (needs driver v.4.2 ) for good measure.

Oh fun memories! "Crystal Quest" and "Beyond Dark Castle", which I played on an SE are still some of my favorite games.

Crystal Quest was a legit all-time classic game. I remain amazed that, nearly 40 years after I first played it, nothing else has ever reproduced its precise control mechanics.

It's already 25 years or so ago but in the early 20-teens I fixed up a Mac Classic II and got it online on the Internet, running both System 6 and MacOS 7.6.1, both fully tricked out with every possible enhancement. A great learning and revision exercise, and still a lovely OS to work with in the 21st century.

But the most fun I had on it was playing CQ...

What (or why) is that end-of-level sound effect, though?

:-D

No...no Programmer switch.

Close, they wired the Reset button!

But, no Programmer switch.

It's very hard to contain my disappointment. Bridge too far I guess.

Magic/More Magic switch required.

And it should be water-cooled and support overclocking. :)

Naming it Racintosh instead of Rackintosh is... Definitely one of the decisions of all time

It’s not ‘Mackintosh’ tho

I can't lie I love a good rack

I'm partial to the tosh but to each their own

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