Dual Floppy Macintosh Prototype? (Or Cursed Apple Mod?!)

[@TzOk]

It had a carry bag, so the second internal floppy was clearly for convenience of carrying it.

[@RedstoneMiner18]

Yeah, sounds about right

[@bramvandenbroeck5060]

I think this mac travelled a lot with its owner, and that's why this mac has 2 internal floppy drives! So nicely done! What a neat macintosh!

[@xPLAYnOfficial]

I love this! The front panel was modded very extremely well, I must say. Please do solder a nice little internal header for the second floppy drive and get the turntable spinning freely again. Would be so nice to see this machine achieve it's true final form.

[@kirishima638]

Those early compact macs are pretty hardy. There are no components that can explode or leak on the motherboard unlike later machines. Sometimes the AV boards have cracked solder joints or bad components but they are easily fixed. This was clearly a well loved computer and the second drive was a labor of love.

[@scifisurfer8879]

Your fellow KZbinrs' reactions are priceless!!!

[@thechillhacker]

Oh, and my theory: It was used by a sales guy or customer facing technical manager - they could have the client come in, swivel the thing around, the client could put in their own disk, do what they need to, and the owner could swivel it back to work together. Perhaps some sort of CNC/machine shop, based on how clean the new drive slot looks? I mean, I didnt see any wayward scratches, misalignment, deviations from standard straightness, etc. Either someone who understood precision woodworking or manual machining did it with micrometers, straightedges, drills, saws, files and sandpaper, or they did it on a bridgeport or cnc mill. I kinda think it has to be CNC mill or highly skilled manual hacker. Come to think of it, that sounds like something a bored ex-engineer would do, not a sales guy...

[@SenileOtaku]

it is possible the person who modded it wasn't the person actually using it. The machine's user might have asked a friend, or someone in another department of the company, to modify it for them.

[@jorisw_]

LOL your reaction to the boot chime.

[@Retrocomputernerd]

Interesting that they decided to add a second floppy drive as an internal mod but not an internal scsi drive. Hard drive mod would have been relatively simple by comparison and likely more useful. Would be interesting to find out if there was specific software that could only be run from floppies.

[@aa-au]

Ah Steve... you (and everyone else) was hoping for a prototype model. Great video and some cool upgrades on that main board.

[@hidde1626]

Make it fully internal!

[@thinkpadBentnoseTheBlind]

What Dan said was the same thing people say when they see my old Amstrad dual floppy [no hard drive] D battery laptop.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

There was a 5.25" floppy proto at one point but Apple never produced it. Mainly because the drives were massive and heavy.

[@kirishima638]

Mainly because they didn’t work!

[@BCjeffro420]

very cool nice find! nice mod.

[@InfiniteLoop]

Would be cool if they had added the grab hole cutout on the left side of the lower drive.

[@darkwinter6028]

It’s a “VatDeFakintosh”!

[@WindowsG]

1:35 what she sees

[@Kikay0n]

Pretty awesome mod

[@50ShadesOfBeige]

I have that Dove upgrade as new old stock that I haven't put into my 512K yet.

[@Mac84]

Neat! Did it come with any software? I’d also love the manual if you have ever come across it.

[@michaelmarks1391]

Aaaaand now your basement is infested too.

[@TheducksOrg]

I wonder if there's a cable pinout that could be made to attach both drives internally..

[@Mac84]

There is, I’ll be exploring that.

[@zbradbell]

@@Mac84 a longer 20 pin ribbon with three connectors and just one or two wires cut and bodged to the secondary drive connector. Would look cleaner but then you also have a useless port on the back someone might unwisely plug another drive into. hmm

[@RedstoneMiner18]

@@zbradbell yeah, maybe put a floppy terminator on there XD

[@nickwallette6201]

I really don’t get the point of the rotating base. The entire computer can be lifted and rotated with one hand! How often was this guy swiveling the thing around?? 😄

[@idahofur]

I had to double check. But, this is a Monster Mac upgrade and not a Dove mac upgrade. But just fyi. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bZ7aoKGdpr6ghNE

[@TheSulross]

which would explain why the slot for the second floppy is so cleanly cut and edge beveled

[@jorisw_]

Clearly says Dove on the boards though?

[@idahofur]

@@jorisw_ So this video is the Dove board and the other video in the link is a Monster Mac board. I think I got that correct. They are both to upgrade a mac to like 2mb of ram and such.

[@WelcomeToMarkintosh]

My guess is they mounted the 2nd floppy internally because of the lazy Susan. Although any SCSI device would be as much of an anchor as an ext. floppy! lol

[@MacEffects88]

Very interesting mods on this machine. It really piqued my interest!

[@Angular777]

What's the point of dual floppy drives? What wouldn't be the point? To allow you to copy from one floppy to another without needing an external drive, old school dual boot... The possibilities are endless. Nevermind, you said it, I commented too soon.

[@lasskinn474]

it is a bit peculiar that apple didn't make one with duals. I guess they figured that might just as well sell a hd.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@lasskinn474 It took until the SE. I guess they were trying to keep the cost down and that second drive would’ve put them over some threshold they couldn’t justify.

[@lasskinn474]

@@nickwallette6201 all they would've had to would have been to make the one with 2 internal floppy drives cheaper than 1 drive model plus cost of the external drive to make it enticing for customers. Theres perceptions though i guess. It would make it look like you need 2 floppy drives for new buyers too, explaining which drive boots and all of that. Plenty of pc's just came with two until hdd's came in all.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@lasskinn474 The Mac was under a lot of price pressure in the early years. That’s why the original only had 128K RAM. That wasn’t the original plan. You might know intellectually that Mac+Floppy is the same thing as Mac, and a Floppy, but when you see the base price of the computer raised by the amount of the otherwise optional peripheral, it just hits different. For one thing, you can always buy it later, and that’s easier to swallow than the larger upfront cost. Just a theory, or maybe the design was set in stone when they were thinking they would have more RAM, and thus less disk swapping, but then it got cut to 128K to hit their target price. And the original floppy drives were larger, so two might not have even fit without a complete case redesign. Indeed (some models of) the IBM PC came with two drives, but it also cost more than the Mac. That was OK, because it was primarily a business tool, and there was a lot of cachet behind the IBM brand. Plus, having a computer made people so much more productive that the high cost was offset in time saved retyping letters or calculating balance sheets by hand. The Mac didn’t have that captive market yet, so they had to compete more on price.

[@TheSulross]

the problem with the 128k Mac is it wasn't really useable for much other than doodling in MacPaint. I know, I got suckered by Jobs into buying one. But later on I did an upgrade to 512 where had desolder the 128K chips and solder in sockets for the 512k chips - plus there was a necessary bodge wire. But 512K made it realistically useful

[@davidsimeone]

this thing came from murfreesboro?? i’ve been seeing tons of apple protypes and stuff popping up in the greater nashville area like this… like an apple lisa proto recently in the brentwood area. im so confused how they all got there lol

[@RedstoneMiner18]

7:01 is that a Gravity Falls refference?

[@RedstoneMiner18]

7:47

[@jdmcs]

"You can never be too careful with leaky batteries!" (Puts glove on backwards...)

[@Mac84]

I somehow misplaced all my left handed gloves 😂

[@thechillhacker]

(@ ~29:30)I love your videos, and your channel but I have to object to part of your troubleshooting of this machine. Before adjusting any trim pots or anything, you should really resolder the main connector on the board and at least visually check all analog board (and logic board - and in this case, expansions) caps, if not just replace. Reason being is otherwise, you are adjusting a (most likely) broken system. So if you adjust it, and finally fix the broken joints, or a gust of magick faerie wind comes through and the (likely broken) solder joint{,s} makes good contact, your adjustments will take effect, no matter how out of spec they are on a functional system. Repair then tune.

[@WelcometoVideoCity]

Tisk tick you didn't discharge the display before starting. I'm gonna tell your wife!

[@Mac84]

I did! I’d never work on these without doing that. However it didn’t make it into the final cut.

[@nicholashein1238]

Uh can I call you Steve? What the shh eep! 1:45

[@nicholashein1238]

@Mac84

[@walmartcartpusher]

I have a feeling this unit was modified internally by Apple, to be used with a projector to display graphics. It’d make sense to have the SCSI connector attached to the upgrade board specifically for that purpose. Dual display would require at minimum 768K system RAM so the additional RAM on the upgrade board, and the Mac Plus ROM’s make sense. I’m sure I am preaching to the choir, but for those who don’t know, early Macintosh ROM’s had all the video/display calls coded into the ROM’s.