Retrocomputing

An Introduction:

My first foray into retrocomputing was in the mid-2000s, at which point "retro" was truly an ambiguous term. Contemporary computers to that time period are what we'd now call retro, after all.

In my mind, it meant an exploration of history, the inner workings of the devices we had come to rely on so heavily, and an appreciation for how quickly (even at that time) they had progressed.

I neglected or sold much of my collection over the years. In fact, I was entirely outside the hobby for nearly 15 years. It was only in 2024 that the spark reignited. Interestingly enough, it was from Action Retro on YouTube randomly showing in my reccomendations.

My initial quest, still unfinished, was to collect all five colors of the original Apple iBooks. Perhaps below I'll create some sort of fun tracker. In the meantime, however, I want to focus on a catalog of my collection.

Portables

iBook G3 Collection

iBook G3

Blueberry

Graphite

Tangerine

Indigo (SE)

iBook G4

1.2GHz, 1.25GB RAM, SSD Upgraded

PowerBooks

68K

Macintosh Portable

Backlit, Restoration in-progress

PowerBook 170

BlueSCSI

PowerPC

PowerBook G3 "Pismo"

500MHz, 1GB RAM, SSD Upgraded

PowerBook G4 "Titanium"

MHZ Uncertain, Headless due to hinge problem, Restoration in-progress.

PowerBook G4 12-inch

1.5GHz, 1.5GB RAM, SSD Upgraded

PowerBook G4 17-inch

17-inch, 1.67GHz non-DLSD, 2GB RAM, SSD Upgraded

Desktops

iMac G4 "Sunflower"

20-inch, 1.25GHz, 2GB RAM, SSD Upgraded

iMac G5 "iSight"

17-inch, UnknownGHz, UnknownRAM, Capacitor Plague, Restoration TBD

Power Mac G5

2.3GHz DC, 12GB RAM, Dual SSD, Quad-Booting 10.4, 10.5, 10.6ppc alpha, Debian ppc64