Why the Macintosh LC 475 is one of my favorite Macs - Paul's Old Crap
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- Опубликовано: 11 дек 2020
- The Apple Macintosh LC 475 had a pretty big impact on me as a kid and it is quite likely one of the main reasons why I became a Mac user in the 90s. I'll talk a bit about my history with the LC 475 and do a hardware tour of the one I've owned for years.
Paul's Old Crap info:
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#AppleMacintosh #VintageComputer #vintagemacintosh #retromacintosh #vintageapple #LC475 #macos #macintoshLC #vintage 
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I made a mistake about the VRAM... They are 68-pin not 64. I think I got it mixed up in my head with IIfx RAM.
What if they are actually 66 pin? Go back and count thanks. Also I built what I call the super IIGS. A dream never released but built by me
I love the high production quality intro, then it just cuts to a piece of paper with a sharpied logo 👌
I forgot why I originally made that sign but it became too funny to remove.
@@netfreakcanada Isnth the performa 476 the same machine it looks similar. I had that one for my child hood got it through my school with an apple laser writer 320 ANd 14 inch crt apple monitor.
@@stpworld Yes, Performa models are essentially existing models but with specific software bundles. The actual number will be a bit different but usually fairly close... It's a bit of a silly system.
Hypercard was my jam. I learned it on this model. Made a few games like Myst. That dead computer language was awesome.
Hypercard was so amazing. I loved it, I've even messed around with a couple of the modern programs based on hypercard because of how much I miss it. Unfortunately none of them are as good.
There was a doomed apple "blue-sky" project where they were going to sell credit card shaped CD-Roms that would work like those "CD ROM business cards" that briefly had some popularity, and they were going to contain hypercard programs made by apple and apple hypercard users. They even designed a hypercard specific CD-Rom drive. Obviously it went nowhere, it never even got to prototyping, it's just a bunch of drawings made during an R and D get away at some point in the 90s. But man, in an alternative universe that happened and I have a whole collection of hypercard rectangular CD Roms stored with my old Macintosh.
The pizzabox Macs are my favorite too. I started junior high in 1993 and we had a lab full of LCIIs. I ended up getting the computer room as homeroom and became the teachers assistant. Helped set up a new lab, unboxed brand new LCIIIs and LC520s and AppleTalked them together with a printer and file server. That was my first hands on with computers and I loved it. Currently I’ve got an LC, LCII, LCIII+, and a Performa 475. They all work except the II. The III+ has been recapped professionally. I’m glad to see your ‘amateur’ cap job worked, because I was gonna try the same thing on my LCII 😂
I thought it would be harder to do the recapping but it's actually relatively easy. Mainly just need to make sure the board is clean and there's no bad traces I guess.
The LC 475 (in Europe called Performa 475) was my entry in the Mac ecosystem and one of my first computers. I loved the machine and spent a lot of hours with it. Thank you so much for the interesting and great video
I also had access to these machines at high school. My story was similar, we had many Mac Classics in the main lab we used, as well as various Apple II machines. We had to boot all the computers with our own floppies that we had to buy from the school.
Other labs had Plus's and maybe 512K machines also. After a few years, we started to get the machines upgraded and other labs started appearing throughout the campus. We had Classic IIs and LCs/Performas in one of the main labs, and a mixture of LC474s and Quadra 605s. The main lab also had a Mac IIvx and PowerMac 6100. The head computer teacher had a LC3 for himself and had various machines as the servers for the labs. All the apps came from the servers.
There were some Performa 5x00 machines around the school also.
This is interesting video to stumble on. My first family computer was a Mac LC 520. Been a Mac user ever since. This is such a nostalgia hit!
This was a great review of a vintage mac system. Like yourself, I never paid much attention to Apple computers until they had full sized color monitors. My first from the 1990's, was an All-in-One 5400 with a 180 Mhz 603e Power PC processor. After bringing it home and making sure that it worked properly, I opened it up and installed the Apple video card system and the Apple TV/FM radio card which, included a matching black remote control. Several year's ago, I was able to replace this system by adding an All-in-One 5500 to my collection. Once, I added my two internal Apple cards (video and TV/FM) it was as if, my old system had come back to life.
I once had a 5500/275 and wouldn't mind getting another one once I have more available space. I don't currently own any Macs of that form factor.
@@netfreakcanada That sounds cool. Back in the day, I had to decide if, I wanted to try to pick-up a used All-in-One G3 which along with the floppy drive and CD-ROM drive also had a built-in Zip drive (this model came right after the 5500 and had been sold during the same period as the CRT iMac) or if, I should go for an All-in-One 5500. However, selected the 5500 All-in-One model because, I knew my G3 upgrade card, Apple video card, and Apple TV/FM card taken from my old 5400 would all work perfectly. Even today about once a month, I pull it out press the black apple remote control to turn it on and enjoy vintage programs and games.
The Mac Color Classic, which came out at the same time as the LC475, was the first Macintosh I purchased myself. It wasn’t as good as the LC475 but it looked nicer. Today the Color Classic is going up in price.
my first family computer!
I will never be 100% sure exactly which macintosh model was the one I used as a kid in first grade back in '93-94 but the thing that I do remember and use to spot it is that oval shape design on the floppy slot which is what the old macintosh computers in my school had. And this was the system that's basically the responsible for my love to computers today. I remember getting excited for tuesdays and thursdays which were the 2 weekdays selected by my school for computer class. The memories of sitting down and using this machine and something about using it that made me SO happy. The graphics, the way everything responded when made an input either clicking stuff or typing words and seeing them pop up on the screen. It was magical. My favorite was the Trash icon that got all bloated whenever something was dropped in it. It was so funny. And then I think it was in second grade where I got to learn how to use floppies to store documents. Talking about the 5-inch ones. Those were really special days in my life as a kid.
The original LC was my first Mac back in 1992 - had it with the trinitron monitor which was actually really good. What a great machine! Was later upgraded with a big and noisy 40 Mb external SCSI drive :D
Those first thirty seconds...umm, uncomfortably amazing! Great work just on the opening! Brb tho-I have some old Crap to watch now. Hehehe
That was actually the first time I bothered to try a macro lens on the video camera, and I did that since my normal lenses couldn't focus so close on my limited desk space. I'm actually surprised at the result myself.
@@netfreakcanada Ahh man keep it up! Its nice seeing everything so close up. 🙂
The LC476 was my first Mac.
Found this video and am resisting the urge to get out my PM 5500 Director's Edition again.... This is a well edited video and this computer looks awesome for its time :)
I used to have a 5500 but not the black one. Neat system. The LC 475 though was probably one of the best looking compact computers I had seen at that time and it's stuck in my mind forever haha.
Nice video man
They were great for their time. My LC475 replaced an LC2. Back then, a 160MB (yes MB) HDD, 8MB of physical RAM with 1MB of VRAM seemed extravagant.
I do recall the low-cost monitor shown. Fortunately, I still had the 14 inch Trinitron monitor and Laserwiter NTR that I bought with the LC2. The Trinitron monitor base had the exact same front profile as the LC 'pizza box' case and it gave superb quality images.
Even when new they didn't come with a screw in the rear case. I've only ever seen them fitted in the original 68020 LC case.
I left the clock speed at 25MHz but fitted a 68040 (with FPU) salvaged from a Quadra 700.
My LC475 was in daily use until 1996 when I bought a 604 based 7600/120 inc. Zip drive. Such decadence - lol.
In my elementary school, there was one lab that had LC 3s and another lab that had ibm ps2 model 25 computers. I love both!
After I left this school I spent a year at a place that had a "good" lab with 386s and then a typing class lab of 8088s or whatever they found in a dumpster. Probably half didn't use hard drives and I think it was some weird Novell network going on. Kind of neat, but after this I was briefly at a completely brand new school and they had whitebox Pentiums running NT connected to the entire school district LAN... Nobody believed in security in the 90s and it was great :)
I remember when I was at college, people flocked to the new Pentiums. I always went for the older 486s or Mac LC475s. It always meant I had peace and quiet while the Pentium section was always busy.
I had one of these. Loved it. I over clocked mine to 33mhz. With all your upgrades I’m surprised you’ve not done that.
I've considered it but I like keeping these things unmodified. If it was my only Mac, I probably would try it but if I need the extra MHZ I can just pull a Quadra 840av off the shelf.
@@netfreakcanada Fair enough. But then you are running a full '040 with a SSD HD. That probably makes a bigger difference.
Instantly reminds me of middle school. They were out dated when I was using them, but it still played Snood :)
The 25mhz 68040 Macs that cost half the price of the Amiga 4000 were brilliant.
I bought a repackaged LC 475 which is a Performa 476 a few weeks ago and recapped the logic board. Everything runs perfectly and I oughta overclock it once more again. On top of that I have a full ‘040 with 36 megabytes of ram while running system 7.1 and system 7.5. Such a godsend of a performance leap from the Macintosh LC III+!
Funny I was alreay out of college when I was first introduced to the Mac LC and I love them. My caps on my LC 475 are all real clean but my power supply will need to be re-capped. Not an expert but will give it a try.
With the right supplies, it's actually fairly easy.
@@netfreakcanada thanks
I don’t remember the Performas being sold in Canada until the PowerPC Performa models came out. I remember that the LCs were still available to education and retail audiences.
My elementary school had two LC 575s and many Unisys Icons (which were heavily subsidized by the Ministry of Education in Ontario)
I don't personally recall ever seeing a 68K under the "Performa" name up here but I also wasn't specifically looking for that sort of thing. I did get to see Color Classics in another nearby school and a teacher brought in an LC 575 they bought for home, but these all had the "normal" names on the cases.
@@netfreakcanada You’re right - the first ones I remember were the 5200 series badged as Performas.
Yeah I think the first Performa I saw in person was the 6400 in my school's AV room. In my entire Mac collection, I don't think I even own an actual Performa badged system.
I'm surprised that LC 475 doesn't use the original LC chime, but it's still a nice computer. I want to someday grab a corroded LC and transform it into a sleeper Intel Atom PC.
Only mac ever to never crash.
I got one of these with monitor for free! Owner said it didnt produce video, turns out it just needed the "PizzaBox powertoggle" because of a dead pram battery. Still use it to transfer files from 1.4mb floppies to 800k floppies for my other macs, because my broke ass wont afford a bluescsi lol
I am getting SCSI SD adapter card for my LC475 this week. My first computer was a LCII (used) and it was great for what I used it for when I was about 32 but later got my LC475 also used. All my SCSI drives are old and failing and only have one good power supply. I hope the SD adapter will do what I want. I do have 3 other LCII that I got at my old college for dirt cheap $10 I believe in the late 90's. Think I may try and get them going also.
The SD and CF adapters for SCSI and IDE are real convenient but I do miss the sound of hard drives. Unfortunately almost all the drives I have from that era have bearings so loud it gives you a headache to use them.
@@netfreakcanada Yes, I know what you mean. It will be different to have a quite Mac.
I started with the Mac 128K roughly a decade before you. Contrary to what Steve Jobs would have us believe, the 128K Mac was just suitable to dabble, so I took the plunge and upgraded it to 512K (which meant desoldering the old memory chips, putting in sockets, seating denser memory chips, and applying a jumper wire). Then after adding an external harddrive, it became usable. It wasn't until the Mac Plus with 1MB and SCSI port that the Mac became truly viable, and that's the one I first started getting paid to develop software. Used to pop the case and plug a Logic Analyzer probe on the 68000 to aide in figuring out memory stomping software bugs. Glorious, primitive times!
I think I appreciated computers more back when it was a struggle to keep them going. These days if a modern computer has any issues, I toss it out and buy another one.
I grew up with one if these (albeit badged as a Quadra 605, it was the same machine.) CompUSA was really trying to unload these things, as they were already a couple years old at the time (they wanted to get rid of their 68K machines and sell PPC ones), and my parents got it for me at age seven for very cheap, like less than $200 if I remember correctly. Played games on it all the way up through the late 90s until the power supply fried.
That is pretty cheap for a new in box Mac from a retail store. I paid around $800 for my IIsi from a used computer store, but the LC 475 in this video was probably like $10 on eBay when nobody wanted them.
I can fix it, where is it located. All i need is a sliver of metal and I can recreate it from it time quantum configuration
Oh, Apple when for a different chord for their start-up chime!
Great video and great work! I don’t understand people being afraid of tantalum surface Mount caps. I find them super easy to do. In fact I only learned to solder in mid May and my first projects were IIsi recaps. With tantalums.
In regards to the CPU it’s a very easy overclock. Just check out a post on Reddit for the resister configuration that’s needed for 33mhz.
I thought they would be harder than they are. I'm still not great at soldering but I've been using the tantalums for a bunch of boards now without any issue.
@@netfreakcanada Did you manage to try increasing the motherboard clockspeed to 33mhz yet ?
I'm not really planning on doing it but we'll see in the future. I generally prefer my systems to be unmodified.
@@netfreakcanada I can see that point. I agree as well. However, you already have modified it by putting a 68040 33 on it, and you've also recapped it. That's the logic I use when looking at mine and deciding to modify. Am I changing it anymore than it is already being changed? With regards to the modification, it is also easily reversible in the future.
@@Stryder_The_Nite_Owl True, but I don't really need a 33MHz LC when I have a 40MHz Quadra. I also have a Quadra 700 I considered bumping up from 25MHz, so I'd probably do that and leave the LC.
13:03 there is a way to bypass this: after you turn the lc475 on, turn it off and then immediately on again. This apparently bypasses it.
The “real” machine was called the Quadra 605. Jam in an SSD from Red Rock Technologies.
Do the overclock, these cpu were designed for higher speeds, it really makes a difference to run it at 33 mhz, i think video clock speed also increases to 33mhz
Makes me wish i did not throw away my old Performa :(
Would be fun to play all the shareware games from the mid 90s
저는 개인적으로 쿼드라700이 제일 끌렸고, 한때 파워맥 8100을 소유했었죠.
BITD my first Mac was a Color Classic. I owned it for a just over a year and by that time it had been into the repair shop 3 times. Reading my warranty I noticed a repair/replace clause. I contacted Apple Canada and they eventually agreed to replace my Color Classic with a shiny new LC475 (I had to buy the monitor). Now I'm not sure if I got a good deal or not.....
For the time, jumping to the performance of the LC 475 would be much better than the Color Classic. I would have done the same.
You got a good deal for sure. Better everything inside. And while it didn’t have a built in monitor, the Color Classic’s monitor was too small for some software (even the LCII’s 12” monitor was pretty small).
hey. good video. Just a question. I still using one of these just as typewriter with mac os 8.5, and uses it also connected to the internet with farallon ethernet card to use irc only.... but now i have an issue with the system date. Any idea how to push the operating system to set date over 2021?
This isn't something I personally use but you can find this "SetDate" utility at www.synack.net/~bbraun/macapps.html which apparently fixes the date problem up to 2042.
Thank you. I will try it. 😃
Just got a GSII. No software. Where do I begin?
Nope, I do not prefer the LC 475 over the LC III.
I do love the simplicity, smart engineering, and layout of the interior, on both.
What if the ram is actually Dsimm? It was a hydrogen of dimm and simm created for speed and power for the cray megacomputer
think I remember if pressing option while opening monitor control panel you get more resolutions. that's a memory from over 20 years ago so a grain of salt..
Kind of... I think it still only gives you supported resolutions but it also let you change from the typical Mac gamma to something else? I've used that key before to see the options but I forget the specifics haha.
In the year 2064 we have batteries 🔋 like that , but ours are rates for @ 10,000 years. Crazy right? But we tested one in a time flux general field we ran it for 10k years before it failed (took 23.6785 hours in real time our universe)
But what do you do with it? I see lots of people upgrading these old Mac but I don't hear what they are using them for.
Fire it up and play games for nostalgia sake. Nothing beats having the real hardware to play with.
@@netfreakcanada Perhaps a follow up with some of your favs!
@netfreakcanada I never experienced these macs back in the day so I don't really feel the nostalgia part. Games r fun tho
Doesn’t that machine also take an apple ii lc card?
It can. The IIe card should work in any model which accepts the LC PDS card, including the Color Classic. I have one of those but haven't gotten around to trying it yet.
Is a machine like this with a duffrent crt and no mouse worth 190$
thousands of colours what means... 15bit o 16bit depth?
I don't know off hand how many colors but 16-bit should be considered "thousands" of colors. 8-bit is 256 colors I believe.
My primary school had one. I wished I could grab it. But I was an broke school kid.
I really should have tried to hassle school districts for their old computers. I'm assuming they went to recyclers at some point. Every now and then random people sell off old school computer lots which they must have gotten from somewhere...
@@netfreakcanada yeah it's sad. The computer had been upgraded to the full multimedia set-up. It needed an 5 plug power board just power it.
I like ur name lol
What if one built and installed 10 gigs of ram , yes gigs not megs