Restoring Apple's fastest Mac (in 1990)
Video Overview & Insights
By the 1990s, desktop computers were being pushed to do far more than simple desktop publishing...so Apple pulled out all the stops.
No interest in having an Apple //e ?
Mac II/IIx/IIfx BlueSCSI bracket model: https://www.printables.com/model/1115451-macintosh-ii-series-bluescsi-v2-bracket
"CR2032 Toaster" battery adapters: https://github.com/alxlab-zone66x/cr2032_toaster
My high school had several computer labs in the late 80s and early 90s and the flagship lab was mostly Mac IIci units, with one gleaming IIfx at the front that you had to book time slots on. It was, indeed, a beast.
IIfx recreation motherboards: https://github.com/TheRealBolle/IIfx
Sources:
We all knew that the II fx stood for "Too F*ckin' Expensive"
TinkerDifferent forum thread with hybrid-capped IIfx: https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/massive-filthy-find-in-south-carolina.4020/post-34126
"Apple's Special fx," Byte, April 1990.
20mb in 1990 was baller
Mac IIfx used on Terminator 2: https://history.siggraph.org/animation-video-pod/terminator-2-computer-graphics-effects-by-cameron/
Apple Developer Note 15: https://wiki.preterhuman.net/DV_15_-_SCSI_Termination
Used to own a Macintosh Performa 630 DOS Compatible, loved that machine, Had a MOTOROLA 68LC040 32 Bit AND an Intel 80486 DX2 (P24) Loved it to bits. Fully spect with a network card and a CD ROM drive
Black IIfx terminator photo: https://www.finn.no/recommerce/forsale/item/377329360?
"Study ranks Mac first in class," Computerworld, April 8, 1991.
Ahhhh! Flying Toasters!
"Apple offers low-cost printers, cuts PC prices," Computerworld, March 18, 1991.
"Dual Dynamos," MacUser, December 1991.
I’ve got an FX in my attic and thankfully I pulled the batteries. I used it as an imagesetter RIP
WHATS IT WORTH?
"Apple bids farewell to Frank Casanova after pivotal 36-year tenure," https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/04/24/apple-bids-farewell-to-frank-casanova-after-pivotal-36-year-tenure
IIfx logic board recreation GitHub: https://github.com/TheRealBolle/IIfx
Flying toasters!
00:00 - Introduction
01:26 - What's in the box???
My college had one of these in the 90-95 time frame. They used it to operate a high quality color flatbed scanner open to students but they also had a boxed copy of A/UX on the bookshelf in the corner of the room. I borrowed a copy in order to snag MacX, a Mac X11 client which allowed me to connect to the Sun Sparc lab remotely to do my programming homework from my mac in my dorm room. The funny thing was people also used it to check their e-mail via eudora using a floppy disk for storage. Someone had pushed in the second floppy bay cover and one day I fell for it and my disk fell inside with a "Klunk". I took off the top of the case and found a stack of e-mail floppies 2-3" tall inside. Haha.
03:25 - Double trouble
06:07 - Everyone loves a montage
I got a MacII in 1987 then the IIFX was my dream machine util the Quadra hit.
08:09 - Why did you skip the montage?!
09:38 - Gotta go fast
someone on the manufacturing floor was looking at the data sheet and didn't know the difference between those caps. It could literally be that simple. It still booted up just fine so, probably just poor quality control on the floor
12:06 - Ready for liftoff
13:41 - TWO montages in one video, wow
My first job after uni was as a graphic designer (Photoshop, Freehand and QuarkXPress) and I had one of those on my desk with a rotating Radius screen. I felt dead lucky to be working on that!
14:57 - dddddddddddddddddd
16:35 - If you have to ask how much it costs...
Fond memories of my grandfather's IIfx.
He worked at American Steel in Detroit and it had a massive screen (for the day), just for running Ashlar Vellum 3D CAD software, My first taste of learning CAD.
The machine just felt like a beast. 😊
18:59 - The final chapter
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My dad bought a Mac II when they came out in '87. It was an impressive beast for its time. We had the 13" AppleColor display. Good times.
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I had one of these machines but had to get rid of it when I saw a T1000 beginning to crawl out of the disk drive.
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Music by Epidemic Sound (https://www.epidemicsound.com).
I had a quadra 950 for a while. I wonder where it is now?
Intro music by BoxCat Games (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/BoxCat_Games).
Yoo thanks for all the valuable info! I have two IIfx that i need to rebuild and get working, tp interface with a harrison seriesTen mixing console. Two serial cards with 6802s and 4 ram slots esch xD
More User Perspectives
that is why windows won until 2007. Apple was always so expensive!
@Bullet_1987You talk of capacitor leakage but just close the power supply up and put it back to work with 45 year old capacitors. Funny. You realize they are not only way past their life span but can cause a very big problem at any moment. if you want to preserve it, you shouldn't be using the power supply as it is.
@johnnyrotit844I was sysadmin at my university, and installed many IIfx, IIgs for professors in the robotics lab. Played many great games in the student labs on those things. Loved them.
@NomoreidsleftI have surplussed so many machines like this. Its great to see them "alive" again.
@rgm4646Another user here. Mine had two floppy drives, but I couldn’t stretch to 2 graphics cards/ screens. Mine ran music midi sequencing software. Happy days!
@blueboxav36791991. I visited an Apple Centre with my mum to talk to them about possibly getting my first computer, until that is, my mum heard the prices. Even a second hand Mac Plus with external HDD was going to be close to AU$2,500. They sent us home with a big brochure of the full Mac line up, and a brochure on personal loans. I don't remember if they had any Mac II's on display, but they were certainly in the brochure. I know, cos I still have the brochure. (I ended up with a Mac Classic that had been sitting in a cupboard at my dad's work for a year, plus a ImageWriter II for $2k, which I think he paid off out of his salary.) I know I was curious about the Mac II family, however after attending the product launch for the Quadra 840av (and Newton) in 1993, I lusted after that tower instead.
@The-Cosmic-HoboIt was attached to a microscope, you're welcome.
@Folsomdsf2The IIfx is the last Apple computer on my NEED list after getting my IIci. I doubt I'll ever get one, but it would be nice to touch one again.
@MacCrafter70710:47 are these 2026 prices?
@markredf150At my first job our art director had one of those, with a big 19" SuperMac Trinitron monitor, a wacom tablet and a SyQuest drive. It was a sweet machine, super fast and reliable too. The other art folks had IIci's which were good but the IIfx was the boss!
@johnmerryman1825Comment…
@VarrowsanarrowI don't know why it's going fast but it is going to do it forever.
@WillieColeman-g6wRestoring it is impossible because we're in the future and that's why it's abandoned.
@WillieColeman-g6wWhich i like
@WillieColeman-g6wThat's the IIfx
@WillieColeman-g6wThis Mac started my business. ❤ Pure Nostalgia
@claudefox2882The best video card is an Apple 8*24 GC and an 8-bit TOBY Frame buffer, which will get accelerated by the 8*24GC.
The Radius Precision was good for 24 bit color. The Precision Color Pro 24GX was 24 bit color on a 21" Color monitor.
( Ahhh no. The Precision Color 8xj was the bottom of the line, in terms of resolution, but it was accelerated and would also bus master other Apple cards)
One of my IIfxs came with both 48Mb of ram with simm doublers, and ... a dual level hard disk tray for a full height drive.
Wicked Fast - Of course, the Dash fx was really stock IIfx motherboards with tested ram, and clock chipped. They said that almost all IIfx boards they used would run stable at 50Mhz.
You don’t need a reason to do preventative maintenance. That’s why it’s preventative.
@funkytransportI remember the FX. It was a beast at the time it shared a legacy with the legendary Mac SE/30.
@DR-xm9ckI made a real good living repairing the floopy disk drive on Mac because Sony used silicon grease hardened stopping the complete insertion of the diskette. At that point end users would do a tug a war trying to get the diskette out and would break the top read write head off the gimbal. Apple would not allow Sony to sell the heads but a similar drive HP used the same heads. We then realign the new heads using a scope and a Dysan alignment disk that produced cats eyes for forward alignment and 4 blocks for azmith sideways alignment. I miss those days and feel so blessed to have been in the industry in the early years of PC computers. Even built an Apple II from a bootleg board that was copied and then programmed EPROMS from the original hardware. We were hacking into the industry back in the golden years of the personal computer. Steve was my hero although I didn’t care about how he treated his employees.
@louleleaYou’re lucky to get the Macintosh FX and not the CX or CI because the tantalum caps always leaked and ate up the copper on the motherboard and the through holes. To fix it we would run thin buss wire from top to underneath to complete the traces since there was no easy way to make the through holes work being that the pcb board was 3-4 layers of traces in between. I made a real good living repairing the floopy disk drive on Mac because Sony used silicon grease and it hardened stopping the complete insertion of the diskette. At that point end users would do a tug a war trying to get the diskette out and would break the top read write head off the gimbal. Apple would not allow the Sony to sell the heads and we would buy heads from Sony for a similar drive HP used and then realign the new heads using a scope and a Dysan alignment disk that produced cats eyes for forward alignment and 4 blocks for azmith sideways alignment. I miss those days and feel so blessed to have been in the industry in the early years of PC computers. Even built an Apple II from a bootleg board that was copied and then programmed EPROMS from the original hardware. We were hacking into the industry back in the golden years of the personal computer. Steve was my hero although I didn’t care about how he treated his employees
@louleleaCool I used to work at radius good to see the old cards. See how they had a number of cards designed just like the one placed in the machine with different levels of RAM all the way up to a 24 bit graphics card if it was a new bus card, it probably worked..
@Wonderama2026MAAAAN! A Mac EVEN WITH COLOR! Now we're talking. And it WORKS! Great for Apple people.
@hstrinzelreal ones remember that t is was a baller computer
@benjones7100This mac was a monster for desktop publishing with a SuperMac 24 bit card. I even remember installing a JPEG compression accelerator card! The IIfx used black SCSI terminators, which were key for stability.
My favourite old workstation Mac, together with the SE/30.
I was a bottom side board inspector on the assembly line in Cupertino for the II ci and fx.
@AriesQfactorIn a room full of random old stained macs one of these ran the rip to an image setter, never failed and rarely restarted. Proper workhorse.
@woolfy101This was very enjoyable and peaceful to watch.
Subbed.
Cannot wait to sit back and binge watch you other content.
Shame I would have loved to see it play some games
@0Synergy6:21 almost cried. so many memories… and even today…….
@tbytes_ethI had one on my desk years ago, it was teh only IIfx at the company and everyone was jealous that I got it. was a beast at the time.
@KellyAnnaSchwabOh wow! Blast from the past! I spent quite a few years in those days cranking away on a maxed-out IIfx. Where I worked at the time when the desktop print revolution happened, and it was clear it was not a fad, and you either joined or went out of business, the owners went in full blast and bought top of the line everything. Maxed out ram, hard drives, SyQuest drives, everything. I can't remember exactly, it's been a few decades, but I think we had two or three of those machines. I remember running Photoshop 1.5 or 2.0 on it. No layers, just channels. Installed with floppies.
@vernonzehrAmazing to see the numbers of very large chips used on the main board.
@tlmoller